The Proper Care and Feeding of Zombies
by Marston Chicklet
Summary: Vampires aren't the only undead in need of a little love. Written for pythia delphi in the 2008/09 SSHG Exchange on Livejournal.
1. Chapter 1: Awakening

Chapter 1

**The Proper Care and Feeding of Zombies**

**Chapter 1: Awakening  
**

Hermione was shoved out of sleep, first by a cold, wet nose, and then a tongue lapping at her face.

She moaned, and pulled the covers above her head. "Ronald, what have I said about shedding in my bedroom?"

"I've already taken him for walkies," said Harry, from somewhere near the doorway, "but we're out of dog food. Would you mind popping over to the—"

This was enough to make her push off the blankets and face the prospect of being coated in Ron's halitosis. "He's a person—a minor detail that the two of you seem to be forgetting. All he has to do is change back and go himself. Or, better yet, change back and eat something other than kibbles."

Ronald the Irish setter didn't react to her glare, except to wag his tail with increased vigour. Harry wasn't any help, either; he just leaned against the doorframe and laughed at her irritation.

"You do realise," she said, fixing her eyes on Harry, "that we have two days to eliminate a year's worth of filth from this building, before holiday cheer descends upon us? I doubt we'll be done in time if we have to Hoover dog hair off of the sofa every five minutes."

Harry abandoned the doorframe to stand upright, his face a mirror of what Ron's would be if a single thing went wrong during Christmas dinner. A moment later, the dog was gone, and Ron was climbing to his feet and brushing fur from his trousers.

"_My_ girlfriend doesn't care about my cleaning abilities," he said.

"Yes, and we're all terribly anxious to meet Little Miss Perfect." The only thing, in Hermione's estimation, that would make this holiday season worthwhile would be Ron finally revealing the identity of his not-very-secret secret girlfriend. At least then he would finally stop dangling bits of information above their heads and waiting for them to leap.

"At the moment, I couldn't care less about your girlfriend," Harry said. "All I care about is you working your way through the stack of dishes in the sink, and not leaving bits of food stuck to the edges."

Hermione winced. Once, years ago, she had possessed standards that involved no dishes left in the sink overnight and regularly dusted furniture. That had been before she had learned how easily overnight could be stretched to a fortnight, and that the only furniture to which she bothered to pay attention was that in her bedroom and her study, and both of which had wards designed to repel the mass of crumpled clothing and old breadcrumbs that was forever creeping outwards to fill any remaining floor space. Not even Kreacher, bless his nobby, wall-hung head, had been allowed inside.

"What about breakfast? You can't put me to work without breakfast—that has to be breaking some sort of labour law."

"So start a union," Hermione said, finally working up the nerve to crawl out of bed. Dressing was the work of just under a minute—ratty sweats and a discarded t-shirt of Ron's. Once, she might have been shy about removing clothing in front of the boys, but after seven years of living together any awkwardness about nudity had long been peeled away. "But before you do, I'll run down the street and pick up some muffins so you two can start."

As Harry dragged a complaining Ron towards the kitchen, Hermione added a jumper and some trainers to her ensemble, and made a mental list. They'd need provisions to last them for the day—there was no way either of the boys would be allowed out to run any sort of errand, given their gift for dawdling—which meant pastries, caffeine (lots), and many ready meals that would only require a quick warming charm before being consumed (and preferably no dishes). In spite of their head start, she beat Harry and Ron down the stairs, and could still hear them bickering over who would do which chores when she shut the door behind her.

Outside, she was confronted—with a perfectly ordinary December day. But it was an ordinary that made her skin prickle at the touch of raindrops and her ears strain for a low hum that hovered just out of range.

She wasn't the only one to notice it; a cat twined around a lamppost, hissing, and a chorus of barking from nearby yards told her that the neighbourhood dogs were as set on edge as she was. Making a mental note to ask Ron if he had noticed anything this morning, she sped up to a light jog and blew on her hands to keep them warm.

The shopping came first. It always began with the good intentions accompanied by the action of stuffing the basket full with whole wheat bread, organic orange juice, and fat-free yoghurt, but rapidly descended into the land of crisps and frozen pizza as she forced herself to admit that she was the only member of the household willing to so much as touch anything that might maybe, perhaps, just possibly be construed as healthy.

If her parents were to glance into the refrigerator on a normal day, they would probably be overcome by the vapours.

Next, the coffee shop. She pointed out various pastry trays, squinted at the drink menu indecisively before deciding that today was the kind of day that demanded as much espresso as could be crammed into a single cup, and bought a Muggle paper. Sometimes the _Guardian_ proved useful in pinpointing magical disturbances—always unwitting, of course, but nevertheless helpful.

The last time her skin had prickled like this, a Muggle scholar working at a university in Kent had stumbled across a tome on how to build an army of stone creatures, and was using them to re-enact _The Canterbury Tales_. Certain types of Ancient Runes, as it turned out, weren't picky about who was allowed to obtain the desired result; they had their own power.

And Kingsley Shacklebolt had the annoying habit of assuming that she was the best person to call in to solve any sort of problem, from which dress robes would be appropriate for meeting the Mongolian foreign minister to handling serial killers. Of course, she was the best—which didn't say much, given she was entrenched in a burocratic organisation of incompetents—but it was, in a word, bewildering.

The Minister of Magic was supposed to play favourites and ignore skill and ability; it was the way of the world.

A balancing charm allowed her to set the cardboard carrier of coffee cups on her head; there it served the dual purpose of freeing up her hands to read the news and acting as a makeshift umbrella, and, well, she had good posture. It was very nearly physically possible, and, if required, she was certain that she could fudge some sort of formula to prove it.

At least, until she read page five.

"Oh, fuck," she said, lurching to a stop that ought to, according to any of Newton's laws, have sent the drinks tumbling to the ground. "Bloody, sodding buggery."

*

She arrived home to a miraculously clean kitchen and Ron and Harry poring over the day's _Daily Prophet_, oblivious to her return until they heard the rustle of grocery bags. It didn't take a genius at deduction to work out what they had been reading, but as their heads popped up, all traces of worry vanished from their eyes.

"You didn't buy me a blueberry muffin, again, did you?" Even when not in puppy form, Ron had mastered pleading eyes. Fortunately, six disastrous months of dating him had cured Hermione of any natural tendency she might have to show sympathy.

"No, it's bran," she said, tossing him his breakfast.

His eyebrows moved from their hopeful position down into the deep furrow of annoyance.

"Don't be silly, it's a cinnamon bun. Sticky and sans anything resembling raisins."

"I knew I loved you," he said, racing up to her and taking the cup with the letter R scrawled on the side of it. After a sip, he added, "And you even got the six sugars!"

"See what you've been missing by dating Mystery Girl? Here, Harry, take your bagel before I beat you with it…"

"Thanks." Harry tore into his breakfast, accompanying his chewing with some strangled noises and some wild gestures towards the newspaper. Catching sight of her bewildered expression, he stopped stuffing his face long enough to swallow and say, "Your serial killer has struck again. Stonehenge, this time."

Her mouth twisted into a tight-lipped smile and she took a bracing sip of her latté. "I saw. It's in the Muggle news."

"Shit," Harry said. "I don't envy whoever Shacklebolt chooses to sort that one out."

"I'm placing bets on our Hermione," Ron said, perhaps too cheerfully for his own good. "Dearest Kingsley told me that he couldn't live without her during our meeting last week."

Harry winked and lowered his voice to sotto. "So expect a proposal any day now."

She glared. "Just because you're holding that bagel doesn't mean I can't still steal it and use it to club you to death. And since you've taken it out of its bag, you'll get cream cheese in your hair."

As Hermione took a menacing step towards Harry, who reflexively shoved the last bit of food into his mouth before curling into a ball, a knock sounded.

"I'll get it!" Spurred by the desire to escape from an annoyed Hermione and the desire to show off his new animagus form, Ron sprinted for the door, shifting into a dog as he went.

Hermione stepped back from Harry, trying to keep a stern mask over her amusement; she doubted her success. "As amusing as the alternative is, I should probably help him, before he spends another fifteen minutes trying to turn the handle with his jaw."

Unfortunately, moving past Ron's helpful exuberance to the front door proved more difficult than she realised; she had to fend off five stones of flying dog on the way there, and then clutch the scruff of his neck to keep him from bolting through when she managed to tug it open.

She should be surprised by the face that greeted her, she knew, but, given that it was the face responsible for sending her owls at all hours, popped into her fireplace when she was wandering through the house with nothing on but a towel, and spent more time in her office than his, begging her to untie his political knots, it was one that she had begun to assume would show up everywhere sooner or later. Her doorstep, comparatively speaking, was hardly unusual.

"Kingsley!" she said, dropping sarcasm into every letter of his name. "You weren't supposed to be here until Christmas Eve—I'm afraid dinner won't be ready for another two days and, erm—let me see—eight hours or so. There's an Italian restaurant just down the street, though, which is decent enough."

"You've heard, then."

"Yes, and I'm on vacation. Have one of the Mysteries underlings handle it for you. I can't _Obliviate_ the entire readership of the British news on my own, anyway. Especially not if the BBC has already got its paws on the story."

"At this point, I think we're beyond damage control; he's taunting us—"

"Or she."

Kingsley nodded. "Or she. At any rate, a ritual killing at Stonehenge is the work of someone who wants to be noticed."

"Well, they've at least proven to us that they aren't Muggleborn—obviously they have no idea what the National Trust will do to them."

He narrowed his eyes, looking entirely too catlike for comfort. "You're making jokes."

"But not agreeing. Yet." She widened the crack between door and doorframe to allow him inside, where Ron proceeded to send fur flying onto Kingsley's robes with each whip of his tail.

"I could give you head of MLE—you'll almost be guaranteed Minister of Magic when I'm gone."

"What if I want Mysteries?"

"I'll see what I can do—either way, though, you'll be the youngest department head in at least two centuries."

She raised an eyebrow, careful to keep a note of irony in her tone to keep him from thinking that he had her. "Kingsley Shacklebolt practicing favouritism? You'll damage your reputation as incorruptible."

"Except you know perfectly well that I wouldn't put anyone into a position I didn't think them capable of handling. I had enough trouble trying to give Umbridge the boot—I don't want to have to do it with someone cleverer."

She patted his shoulder and began digging through the closet for her coat and a scarf. "This is politics, love, not the Aurors—we don't run on merit here. Consider this a favour being done out of pity, a desire for lots of overtime pay, and with the expectation of a large, shiny promotion. Also, if Harry and Ron kill me for abandoning them, you have to promise to search long and hard for a resurrection spell."

Her cloak finally materialised, stuffed at the back among old pairs of forgotten shoes. She pulled it on, tossed a fuzzy blue scarf around her head, and added matching mittens to the ensemble.

"Right," she said, smoothing her hair and turning around, "shall we go fetch Nott, or have you…"

Her words died in her throat at the realisation that Ron was no longer a dog, but a moderately furious human.

"You aren't actually making us clean while you play detective, are you?"

Behind Ron, Kingsley's gaze had darkened as he brushed the fur from his robes. He pinched a few strands between his thumb and forefinger and eyed them with annoyance; Hermione could tell that he was analysing the vigour with which Ron had rubbed fur onto him, and not liking the conclusions being presented.

"Ronald," she said, holding up both her hands in mimicry of a scale and tipping the balance in favour of her right side, "I think you'll agree that murder is more important than cleaning house. Besides, the two of you have already tackled the kitchen, which was the really horrifying bit, and I shouldn't be more than an hour. Now, I'll just pop off, and you can break the news to Harry gent—"

"Hermione Granger, if your foot passes through that doorway, I will make sure that you never walk again."

"—ly."

*

Theodore Nott was reclining against the chain-link fence when she arrived at Stonehenge with a harried Kingsley Shacklebolt in tow. He didn't glance up at their arrival, only stretched and yawned, looking as though he had been asleep on his feet. But Theo had never seemed perturbed by magical disturbances; in contrast, the prickle of her skin now felt electric, and the humming that she couldn't quite hear invaded her head, numbing it and making her blink her eyes rapidly to stay focussed.

"Took you long enough," he said, alert almost instantly. Bleary eyes and morning breath were problems for lesser mortals, whose hair didn't glint with light even when it was cloudy and whose pyjamas were as smooth and perfectly fitted as tailored robes.

Standing next to him in rumpled sweats, her trainers with the peeling soles, and a mass of potentially electrocuted hair, Hermione had never hated him more.

She grimaced. "It's pre-Christmas cleaning day, and Harry and Ron didn't want me to leave them to face the wild beast alone."

"Pass on the message that I promise to protect them, but only if they're as fit as they were in school."

"I'm sure they'll feel deeply comforted by the knowledge." Well aware that neither of them wanted to work and would spend the entire day catching up if she didn't do something, Hermione slowly began moving towards the cluster of reporters at the gates.

"How is our dear hero, anyway? Still being strung along by the Weasley tart?"

"Ginny's not a tart," she said automatically. And it was true. Ginny had made it clear to Harry that the sort of relationship he was looking for wasn't going to work as long as she was flying around the world on her broom, sending fans into fits of awe with her seeker skills, and posing suggestively with her team-mates in foreign magazines.

Theo didn't have a chance to voice his standard reply of disbelief, thanks to the swarm of the press demanding to know their professional opinion, so he had to settle for merely looking amused.

"Our professional opinion," Hermione said, and a hush seemed to fall over Salisbury Plain, "is that we may be able to answer your questions after we've seen the scene of the crime. We'll need you to clear the way in order to do so."

The hush held, except for the whirring of cameras and the blinding light of flashbulbs, as the clump filtered into two groups on either side of the path. She could only hope that most of them were aimed at Theo; he was so much more photogenic than her.

The walk up to Stonehenge was silent; Hermione craned her neck in an attempt to see the altar stone, but could see nothing unusual. In a burst of forethought, she conjured up two notepads and pens and wordlessly passed one of each to Theo. He pulled his camera out of his pocket and returned it to its usual size, focussing the lens on her.

"Smile," he said, as the sharp click informed her that she had been caught mid-yawn.

"Thank you for that," she said with a grimace. "Very thoughtful."

Theo grinned over the edge of his camera. "You're always so charming in the morning. Who wouldn't want to document it, especially given the setting? I promise that if I send it in to a photography competition, I will title it something along the lines of 'Celtic Goddess Expresses Displeasure'. Even the weather is fitting!"

"Yes, and there's a term for that: pathetic fallacy."

"I'll have you know that my lies are anything but pathetic." As if to spite her, he snapped another picture as he said it; Hermione burrowed her chin further into the collar of her coat.

It had been a mistake, really, to convince the department that the camera was a necessity for the investigation. True, having a Muggle digital SLR that didn't produce moving pictures of murder victims had helped endlessly in the case, but it also meant that he had countless unflattering photographs of her expressing various states of annoyance at that day's crime scene.

"It's a minor miracle that the lens hasn't shattered into a million little pieces, yet," Hermione said, narrowing her eyes meaningfully as they stepped over the small rope surrounding Stonehenge.

"Was that a threat?" Theo asked. "If so, not very subtle. I thought I had taught you—oh."

For the first time, the altar stone came into view, complete with a bloodied mass that she could only assume was their victim. A wave of nausea hit her as the scent of blood—she wasn't sure if it was real or imagined—crept inside her nostrils and hovered there, making her want to purge until every last trace of it was gone.

"Oh," Theo said again, his voice shaky, but no longer with amusement. "Sorry, do you mind just holding my camera? I think I need a moment to—excuse me."

Hermione looped the camera's strap over her shoulder, and she forced herself not to take her eyes away from the figure lying prone amidst the henge; after a moment she would adjust to the sight, it would lose some of its horror, and she would be able to approach it without worrying about being sick all over the evidence. Theo, she knew, was doing the same thing in his own way; his footsteps remained measured until he reached the nearest stone. He rested his head against it and proceeded to empty the contents of his stomach onto the grass.

When she was certain that he had finished, Hermione followed him and rubbed the small of his back wordlessly.

"Sorry," he said, once he had recollected himself enough to speak.

"I hardly blame you. That's—" She broke off as a shudder spread out from her spine and filled her stomach with an icy chill. "That was not what I was expecting.

"I always expect that I'll get used to it," he said, spelling the last specks of vomit from his shoes, "but if anything it gets worse."

"It's probably a good thing, you know. Do you really want to be used to looking at corpses?"

His mouth twisted into a wry smile. "No, but I'm hardly any help when I'm busy being ill."

"Do you want to sit down whilst I investigate?"

He grimaced, and his usual easy drawl returned, more forced than usual but a sure sign of recovery, nevertheless. "Hermione, darling, I realise that you mean well, and that you may be very talented in other areas, but you're an absolute shit photographer. Your composition is painful to my artistic eyes."

She rolled her eyes and suppressed the twitching of her lips, handing back the camera. "We could always crop them."

His eyebrows shot up and he cradled the camera, as though reunited with his firstborn. "That doesn't fix the fact that they're always out of focus. Besides, I'm certain you would kill my baby."

Levity—even when created through gritted teeth—somehow made the sight of the bloodied corpse easier to face. As Theo put himself to work, photographing every angle of the altar, Hermione checked to make sure the Aurors' stasis spells were adequate, and crept closer to peer at the naked body. Dried blood was caked to the stone where it had flowed away from the slit throat; she followed the streams up to the cut, which was accentuated by heavy bruising. Except for that on the face, the skin was covered in runes—she couldn't tell whether they had been carved or branded at first glance, or even what they meant—some obviously fresh, but others scabbed and partially healed over.

"Whoever did this planned it for a long time." Her throat was suddenly, inexplicably dry, making her voice scratch as it left her throat. "It's different from the others. The corpse—he—was held in captivity for a while, because some of the runes have had time to scar, and I think he was strangled before his throat was cut."

"It's much more ritualised," Theo agreed, moving his glance from the open, glassy eyes of the victim to the standing stones in the direction that his head was pointing. "The other bodies weren't arranged this precisely, more sprawled on the ground, and I'm afraid to know what those runes are for. We'll have to send away to have them translated—I've never seen anything like these."

"And this is a much larger working—whatever our little friend has been doing up to this point has either been in preparation for this, or he's getting more ambitious—"

"Please don't say that," he replied. "We're already having enough trouble with this case."

Her smile took on a predatory edge. "But ambitious doesn't mean successful—remember the centaur killer last year, and that murder in Accounting? Both made stupid mistakes because they woke up and added a lump of ambition to their morning coffee."

"I'm not sure that you can get much stupider than killing someone at one of the most popular tourist sites in the country, especially on the solstice."

"Then don't complain. Why don't we head back to the office and compare the case files? We'll have to have Hopkins come in to perform the autopsy and see what, exactly, our friend here died of."

"You can take care of that later—I like to keep my holiday season about the cheer and family newsletters, not cards that shriek profanities in my general direction. Besides, I think she actually likes you."

"Possibly because I'm the only one in the department that hasn't cracked necrophilia jokes when she's in the room." There were moments in which Hermione wished she needed glasses, so that she could peer over the top of them sternly; this was one of them.

"How was I supposed to know that she doesn't have a sense of humour? Besides, that was Birkley's fault—he dared me to do it."

"And I thought that pointless dares were one of those proud boarding school traditions that ended when one finished school. Silly me." She surveyed the scene one last time with a furrowed brow. "On the way here, Kingsley said that he had a team coming to collect the body, so they should be here soon. Do you think we ought to wait?"

"The longer we wait, the later I'll get to my parents' house, and the more likely my mother is to kill me for making her wait to set up the tree and deck the halls with sparkling garlands."

"And the more time Harry and Ron will have for setting up a death trap behind the front door, to teach me a lesson about why I shouldn't abandon them in their hour of need."

*

"Granger, you certainly have a talent for obtaining corpses," said Hopkins, brushing off the remaining ash from her robes and sweeping away from the fireplace that connected their office to the Floo network. "And Mr Nott, ever your partner in crime. Where have you stashed the body this time?"

Anne Hopkins was a slightly more frightening version of Madam Pince; she was well over six feet tall, with salt and pepper hair scraped back into a bun and a pair of small gold-rimmed spectacles perched on the bridge of her nose. Her features were as sharp and pointed as the gaze that peered over her bifocals, and every bit as humourless and sensible.

Theo tried to speak, but his natural fear of the woman who had reduced him to a blubbering wreck on his first day of training by suggesting he dissect a victim's stomach meant that his attempt faltered into a squeak. He cleared his throat and tried again, managing to be only moderately shaky. "We had the Aurors take it to the examining room."

"Then there's hardly a reason for you two to hover around as though you were incompetent tour guides; after thirty-five years in the department, I should be able to find my way on my own."

Hermione suppressed a grin at Theo's mortified expression as Hopkins strode past them into the corridor. As the door slammed behind her and the clicking of her heels grew quieter, he turned to her and pulled a face.

"And you wonder where the necrophilia rumours come from," he said, shaking his head. "If that woman has ever had a date…"

He was silenced by the speed with which Hermione's eyebrows reached her hairline. "Be nice. She's helping us."

He sighed and widened his eyes until he had to blink away tears. "You used to laugh at my jokes, even when you were scandalised, but those days are over. Tell me, so that I can stop losing sleep—is it something I did?"

She chucked and punched him lightly in the arm. "Yes, you photographically tormented me. Besides, you hardly need encouragement." She wandered over to her desk and shuffled through some of the papers until she found her box of thumbtacks and plucked out the red one. "Did you pull all the files pertinent to the case?"

He nodded and pointed to the stack of folders next to him. The fact that there were so many made her feel slightly ill; this murder would be the thirteenth since February. To distract herself from the guilt that was unsettling her stomach, she stuck the tack into the map of Britain they had hanging on the walls and pencilled '13' next to it. Theo crossed the room to join her, and for a moment they stared at the wall in silence, seeking a pattern.

"Well, it's more or less certain that the killer has been gradually moving south," Theo said, "but that's hardly news."

"It could mean limited mobility. The last three months, they've taken place solely in Wiltshire—depending on how old those wounds on the corpse were, it might be because they were hampered by a prisoner." She traced her finger in a line from Windmill Hill to the Avebury stone circles, and finally to Stonehenge.

"Or convenience." Theo leaned over her desk and picked up a green tack, sticking it in just south of Bath, where they both knew Malfoy Manor stood. "We ruled him out after the Avebury and Windmill murders because they didn't seem to have any lasting magical impact—he stood to gain nothing from random killings near his property—but this one changes everything. I think all of Wizarding Britain felt the power in the air this morning, and it is something that Lucius Malfoy is certainly capable of."

"Complete with his usual subtlety," Hermione added, making sure the green tack was pushed in all the way. "Any other magical families in the area?"

"None as prominent, as far as I'm aware, but I'll look into it. Also, no one fitting the corpse's description has been reported missing, and there's no one on the werewolf registry that looks like him."

Hermione could have hugged him. "All this whilst I was writing a letter?"

He winked. "I am more than just a pretty face hired to boost the department's morale."

*

When Hermione stumbled home at nearly midnight, half drunk and exhausted from following avenues of possibility, the first thing she noticed was a large auburn dog baring its teeth at her, closely followed by green eyes that had narrowed into slits. However, one look at her expression as she pulled her boots off and collapsed against the wall killed any reprimand that Harry had been about to give.

"That bad?" he asked.

She closed her eyes to block out the memory of the murder scene, but the carved up body and crusted blood seemed to be pasted to her eyelids. "Worse," she said.

There were benefits, she thought, to living with two Aurors; they understood the meaning of 'bad day' in ways that no one else did, and were well acquainted with the remedies for one. Within seconds, Harry had disappeared up the stairs and she could hear the bath running. As he shifted back, Ron still looked resentful, but at least he no longer had the crazed look of rabies in his eye.

"Cup of tea?" he asked as she hung up her coat and unwrapped the scarf from around her neck.

"Would be lovely," she replied, following him into the kitchen.

"So?" Ron asked when they had settled on opposite sides of the kitchen table. "How was it?"

She wrapped her hands more tightly around the mug and stared into it, momentarily wishing that she and Ron had never broken up, if only because it would mean a lifetime of perfectly steeped and sweetened tea, with just the right amount of milk.

"As wonderful as a day waiting for the lab results of the Aurors' swabbing can be," she said. "Oh, yeah, and we stared at the mangled corpse of a man of no known origins for a while, then compared it to photographs of other mangled corpses."

"So we'll not have any steak for the next month, or so?"

She laughed, and stuck her tongue out. "Best not to."

A grin flashed across his face as he settled back into his chair and stared out the window, giving an opportunity to study him. It was amazing how much he had changed in the past year, when her head had been lost in file folders and piecing together bits of evidence. Not her fault, really—serial killers were time-consuming—but it still unsettled her slightly and made her wonder where she had been when his posture had lost its defensive slouch and relaxed into easy confidence, what she had been paying attention to when his expression had become that alluring mix of eagerness and good humour. It begged the question of whether this was the reason for his current relationship with Mystery Girl, or its product; either way it was clearly good for him.

"Stop staring, I'm taken," he said, winking.

She held up her hand and curled it into a claw. "I'll fight her for you."

"Where was this Hermione three years ago, when I was madly in love and trying to hold her attention?"

"Fighting for goblin rights," she said solemnly. "As I have now moved on to the more lowly cause of solving murderers that the Aurors can't handle, I am much more aware of my surroundings."

Upstairs, the sound of running water stopped, and Harry shouted, "Hey, Hermione—your bath is ready."

She practically leapt from her seat, and smiled apologetically at Ron. "Sorry, I think Harry just pulled into the lead."

He pulled a face, and, as if to prove her earlier observation about his newfound confidence, only said, "I'll never understand you girls and your hero worship."

Still smiling, she hurried up the stairs as quickly as she could go without sloshing tea over her hands. She found Harry standing next to the bath, which was practically overflowing with bubbles, looking entirely too pleased with himself.

Gesturing towards the chair next to the bath, he said, "I put a warming charm on the towel, which should last until you're out, and I've brought you the book I saw you reading yesterday—hopefully you're not done with it yet. Need anything else?"

She shook her head, and he beamed—obviously he was practicing his good behaviour for when Ginny arrived. As the door clicked shut behind him, she pulled off her clothes, balling them up and tossing them into the corner, and sank into the bath with a sigh of relief. It took a moment of tingling before her skin adjusted to the heat; once it had, she submerged her head and scrubbed at her face with her palms until she could no longer hold her breath and was forced to break the surface with a gasp.

Instead of reading, she basked in the warmth, closing her eyes and letting her mind go blank. But the peaceful feeling only hovered over her for a moment; at first, it was only broken by a gentle nudging that there was something that she had missed when she and Theo had reviewed the last few murder files, but it quickly turned into a barrage. Corpses frozen in photographs played through her memory like a slideshow from one of her parents' vacations, and, with them, came the smell.

She ducked her head underwater again, trying to dissolve the thoughts, but it didn't work. A moment later, she had flung herself from the bath and was hunched over the sink, lurching with sobs as her body rebelled; as she clutched the cold porcelain, Theo's words came back to her.

_I always expect that I'll get used to it, but if anything it gets worse._

She rested her head on the cool metal of the tap until another wave of nausea hit her.

It wasn't until she finished and had rinsed out her mouth that she realised Harry had laid the towel across her shoulders and was kneeling beside her, a hand stroking her damp curls.

There was a split second in which she wanted to recoil and apologise for her momentary lapse, but she choked it back. This was Harry, after all, who, after seven years of stoicism, hadn't been able to keep food down for three months after Voldemort's defeat.

"Dreamless Sleep?" he asked, and even though she hated the fuzzy cloud it enveloped her mind in, she nodded. Tonight she had no doubt that she would need it.


	2. Chapter 2: Mystery Girl

**The Proper Care and Feeding of Zombies**

**Chapter 2: Mystery Girl**

The next morning, Hermione rose with the sun. Given that it was the dead of winter and the sun seemed to have a natural aversion to cold weather—thus it waited until the last possible moment to drag itself above the horizon—this was hardly an extraordinary feat; it meant struggling out of bed later than she had intended, scowling and with the beginnings of a headache. After taking a moment to let her body recover from the act of standing, she pulled a dressing gown over her pyjamas and stumbled down the stairs.

Her much slower than usual pace allowed her to see how well the boys had managed cleaning without her; it seemed that when they weren't busy trying to foist all the work onto her, they were capable of performing minor miracles. They had even dusted the tops of picture frames and washed the curtain covering the portrait of Mrs Black, neither of which, she was certain, had been done since Kreacher's death nearly two years ago.

Either she should spend more time out of the house, or Harry needed to be threatened more frequently by the looming figure of a dying relationship stumbling towards him on its final pair of bruised and wobbly legs.

The drawing room, too, was an exercise in shock tactics: the dust had been beaten out of the ancient sofa until it was no longer a faded grey but light green (hardly tasteful, but probably no longer allergy inducing), and the rugs had been rolled back to reveal floorboards that looked surprisingly shiny and newly polished, given that there hadn't been any renovations to 12 Grimmauld Place for at least a century.

Harry and Ron were in the kitchen, sitting across from each other in silence as they scanned different sections of the newspaper. She gave each of them a hug on her way to the refrigerator.

"The house looks fabulous," she said. "Thanks so much."

Without glancing up, Ron replied, "Just don't expect it to become a regular occurrence or anything."

"After living with you for this long, I should think that I would know better."

She poured herself a glass of orange juice and some muesli, and claimed the third chair, selecting her own chunk of the newspaper from the pile on the table and skimming through it. The day before Christmas Eve was a slow one for the _Daily Prophet_, it seemed—most of the articles were advice on how to have last minute gifts delivered by tomorrow evening or advertising events to which one could bring the whole family. As Hermione had finished her Christmas shopping in May, and had no prospective family anywhere in her horizon, only the brief stub on the front page, saying that the Stonehenge killing was believed to be connected to the serial murders taking place at various monuments throughout the country, applied to her at all.

The personals, at least, were amusing: single witch looking for intelligent warlock for afternoon tea (and maybe more?), dom wizard seeks sub witch for fun sexy time, elderly witch longs for companion (must love cats, ability to play bridge necessary). They lasted until her cereal was finished, at which point she tidied away her dishes and climbed the stairs to her study.

Much to her relief, it was now the only room in the house that hadn't been recently cleaned: merely the thought of Harry or Ron attempting to organise the stacks of parchment made tears of frustration prod at the back of her eyelids. But there had nothing to worry about—books still lined the walls and stood in stacks on the floor, and there was still the tickling in her nose to inform anyone who entered it that this was a room of books and no amount of dusting could freshen the air.

However, instead of using one of the books to begin her research, she scooped up the laptop that her parents had given when she had graduated from Hogwarts and curled up with it in the armchair. It was big and bulky and hardly cutting edge technology, but it had served her well for the last seven years and she couldn't quite bring herself to part with it.

Besides, she had invested countless hours into making improvements, the least of which included being able to connect to any wireless network within five miles, whether or not it was password protected, a magically expanded memory, and a battery that could be charged instantly with a simple spell.

Even if her father had nicknamed it Ester because he thought it ran as quickly as a crotchety old woman, it was bloody useful and all she really needed. Technologically speaking, she was about a millennium ahead of the rest of the Wizarding world. The closest the Ministry stood to computers were typewriters straight out of the 1950s, enspelled to do the typing without sacrificing one's fingers.

The Muggle news had significantly more coverage of the murder, perhaps because it was not the most recent of thirteen. One article linked her to information about Stonehenge, which she bookmarked, and another featured an interview with the leader of a neo-Druid cult facing accusations. She raised her eyebrows at the woman's claim that she had been at Stonehenge for the solstice but hadn't seen anything out of the ordinary, never mind a human sacrifice, and copied down her name—Jennifer Bartleby.

She still highly doubted that the killer was a Muggle; high on her list of things to make her sceptical was the notion that anyone could have missed that particular sight, even in the dark.

Unfortunately, she wasn't the only one to make the claim—another chronicled an anonymous man's traumatic experience at the end of the revelry, when the rising sun shone through the window of stones.

Two hours and several more articles later, her eyes were beginning to swim, but otherwise the research was soothing and took her mind off of the thoughts that she knew would cluster if she stopped concentrating for more than a few seconds. Nevertheless, Theo being ushered in by Harry came as a welcome distraction, and Hermione took it as an excuse to close her laptop with a satisfying click.

As if to emphasise the likelihood that he had only crawled out of bed half an hour ago, Theo staged a yawn and scowled at her. "Up researching so early, my dewdrop?"

From the doorway, Harry rolled his eyes. "When is she not?"

A slight flush tinged Theo's cheeks but was quickly suppressed and replaced by his most charming smile as he turned around to reply. "If even you and Weasley haven't been able to beat it out of her in the last fifteen years, I'm sure it's a lost cause."

"I think it's embedded in her genetic code." Both of them chuckled, and when it died out, Harry hovered awkwardly, adjusting his glasses, before asking, "Can I get either of you anything? Tea? Lunch?"

"I'm fine—"

"Lunch would be lovely," Theo said, cutting her off. "Tea, too, actually. Two sugars and a hint of milk."

Hermione scowled at him. "Well, if you're making Theo food, I want some, too."

Harry winked at her as he ducked out of the room, and she shook her head in bewilderment.

The flush crept back into Theo's face as he turned back to face her. "Auroring has worked wonders with that man."

"And you're dating Jonathan," she said, emphasising the syllables in his name.

"Actually, his name is James, and, no, I am not dating him any longer."

"You were still dating him yesterday afternoon."

"Yes, and then he broke up with me over dinner."

She winced. "Oh, Theo. I'm sorry to hear that."

He waved away her sympathy with a flick of his hand. "The only thing about that relationship that was remotely functional was the sex—besides, now it frees me up to steal Potter from the tart formerly known as Weasley."

"She's not—"

A palm shot up, silencing her. "Not a tart, I know. But if I think of her as a tart, the guilt will be lessened when I steal him away from her."

"Guilt? And here I thought you were shameless."

He tossed his hair out of his eyes, a mischievous smile creeping across his face. "I am shameless, but a touch of guilt every so often never hurts. It saves me from being a total sociopath."

If it had been anyone besides Theo, she might have been disgusted by the ease with which he moved from one object of lust to another—but because it was Theo, who had been half in love with Harry since they had first started working together four years ago, and because his hair was lacking its usual sheen and he was sitting on the floor with his knees tucked under his chin, looking more than a little lost, the only effect it had was a sudden urge to hug him.

"So," he said after a moment's silence, "why don't you show me what you've been working on?"

With a grin, she flipped through her notebook to the first page of her notes. "I was so hoping you would ask. Okay, so I found out the meaning behind the positioning of the body—the head was facing in the direction of the sunrise on the Midwinter Solstice—but I haven't had any luck with the runes. We'll have to wait for the results on those, I suppose. Also, the leader of a neo-druid cult by the name of Jennifer Bartleby is having fingers pointed at her in the Muggle press—apparently she was among the people taking part in the celebrations that night, but it seems that nobody there noticed the body until dawn."

Theo drew his eyebrows together. "What kind of revelry?"

Hermione shrugged. "The harmless sort—I expect there were people running round in fancy dress, and some Morris dancers, oblivious to the anachronistic nature of performing at a pagan celebration. Maybe even a bit of chanting."

His brow furrowed further, and his mouth twisted into something that was either a smirk or a grimace. "Do Muggles often behave like this?"

"At least it is harmless," she said, turning the page. "Several other revellers saw nothing, which suggests either a conspiracy or the possibility that there were some sort of wards up inside the stone circle that prevented the murderer from being seen."

The look of disgust held. "I'm not inclined to like conspiracy theories."

"Nor am I, but we ought to look into the druids, just to be thorough." She glanced up to see him nodding in assent, then continued. "I haven't had any luck finding a name for the victim, but I'll keep searching databases of missing people."

"Is that everything?"

She sighed. "Not bad for a morning's work, but yes, unfortunately." It was a constant source of annoyance that she couldn't type 'human sacrifice' into a search engine and have all the answers she could possibly want pop up on the screen in front of her; she tried to tell herself that the extra work helped build character, but had never yet found it soothing.

Theo beamed in response. "Fabulous—for the first time in living history, I have information that you don't."

"Do tell," she said, straightening. "And quickly. The suspense may kill me."

"I stopped by the office on my way here to see if Hopkins had sent us the lab results."

"And?"

"Not yet, but I ran into Kempe—you know, the new head of the Aurors—and apparently there have been inferi popping up all over the country since yesterday."

Any last vestiges of hope that Hermione had held about solving the case with minimal fuss and having her promotion by February died a swift, painless death. "Coincidence?"

"In this case?" He snorted. "Not likely. Besides, it would have taken a lot of power to raise the dead in these numbers."

"On the bright side," she said, "we can just wait and see where they decide to congregate. On the somewhat less bright side, dealing with a necromancer's army was definitely not high on my list for how I wanted to spend my Christmas holidays."

Harry chose that moment to appear with soup and artistically arranged cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off—the expression on Theo's face was one that she would have donated an entire paycheque to see. His eyes widened and darted from side to side, as though he couldn't decide between the sight of a pleasantly toned man in a fitted t-shirt or the meal.

"Thanks, Harry," said Hermione, relieving him of the tray.

"Yes," Theo said weakly. "Thank you."

*

They spent the rest of the day lying on their stomachs in Hermione's study, peering at the screen of her laptop as she attempted to find information on Inferi and scanned through pages of missing people. Harry periodically appeared with fresh cups of tea, depositing them on the floor beside a flushing Theo before slipping out.

"Well, we found another person who managed to confuse 'inferi' and 'succubi'," she said, clicking the back button with more force than was required.

Theo shuddered. "Did they really have to be so descriptive?"

"I thought the pictures were worse, personally. A decaying corpse thrusting itself onto an unsuspecting person? Ugh."

She switched over to the window of missing people and scrolled down. The trouble was that there were too many people who fit the description of male, five foot nine, light brown hair, blue eyes. Every so often Theo would point to a picture, she would click it, and both of them would shake their heads.

"There has to be a better way to do this," Hermione said after nearly five hours, shutting the laptop and pushing it aside. Her elbows burned where she had been resting them on the rug, so she relieved them and rested her cheek on the floor.

"We could release his picture to the Muggle news. There isn't exactly much need for secrecy at the moment, and Kingsley is having the authorities turn over whatever information they can find to us."

Hermione nodded. "We'll have to clear it first, but we can write up the release now—start running it on the twenty-sixth."

"What about suspects? We should start interviewing them soon, before they disappear off the face of the earth."

"If anyone runs off, we'll have our culprit. We can poke around Stonehenge some more after Christmas to look for any leftover traces of wards and interview magical families in the area to see if anyone noticed anything strange that night."

"I'm going to be at Malfoy Manor tomorrow night—Christmas party. I'll keep my ears open, and maybe ask a few questions. Subtly, of course."

Harry's head appeared in the doorway, yet again. "Ron's cooking dinner. It should be ready in about twenty minutes, if Theo wants to stay."

"I'd love to," Theo said, ducking his head to avoid Hermione's amused look.

Harry nudged her shoulder with his foot. "You look like you're about to burst into tears."

"I feel like I'm about to burst into tears. Why can't everyone live together in peace and harmony, and not kill each other in ritual sacrifices? Especially when I am supposed to be on holiday?"

"Because you are destined for great things," Theo said, "which means that you are forbidden the eight hours of sleep and the vacation pay allotted to the rest of the human race."

*

The next morning, Hermione chose to laugh in the face of destiny by refusing to work. Instead, she helped Harry and Ron with the final tidying touches, decorated a Christmas tree to Celestina Warbeck's Christmas album (it was as terrible as always, but nevertheless a tradition that Ron refused to let her break), and took puppy-Ronald for a walk in the park with Harry.

After days spent puzzling over a case that was disturbingly lacking in helpful evidence, the crisp air and sensation of sleet melting on her cheeks seemed to slap the life back into her; she laughed as Ron gripped the lead between his teeth and tried to bound ahead of them. Only Harry was withdrawn, and she knew without thinking about it that he was worrying about seeing Ginny for the first time in three months.

Impulsively, she squeezed his hand and smiled at him. His lips twitched in response, but the lines in his forehead didn't relax until they had returned to the house, and Molly and Arthur had arrived with their daughter in tow.

Ginny flung herself at her brother with an agonised cry that suggested she was more than relieved to have people around her who weren't her parents.

"Glad to see that my baby sister survived her months of continental debauchery with minimal injury, except—did you break your nose?"

"Yes," she said with a wink, "although it definitely didn't happen playing quidditch."

There was a pause as everyone searched out Molly's expression, which didn't disappoint: her face was an odd combination of patched purple and red, mouth and eyebrows twisted into an expression that said exactly what she thought of her daughter's foreign antics.

Ginny giggled. "Relax, Mum. The bludger that did it made the front page of the _Prophet_."

A moment later, Hermione found herself on the receiving end of nine stones of hugging and heavily perfumed Weasley. "We'll have to catch up properly, this time," the redhead whispered in her ear. "Lots to tell you."

"Of course—just say when."

And then it was Harry's turn.

A quick glance told her that, yet again, the entire room was united in curiosity. Feeling less guilty for staring, Hermione trained her eyes back on them with the words that she had spoken to Theo yesterday ringing in her head.

Ginny had paused a foot away from Harry, her faltering gaze flicking away from Harry's searching one.

"Missed you," he said. "It's not the same without you here."

She nodded her agreement. "How have you been?"

Harry's shoulders bunched up in what was possibly the least nonchalant shrug of all time—a moment passed before his intention became clear. Still hunched over, he closed the gap between them and lowered his face towards her. It was like peering at a horror film through the gaps between her fingers; for a moment, Ginny looked as though she were about to turn and run, but instead chose the more diplomatic route, dodging the kiss in favour of wrapping her arms around him.

His lips collided with her left ear, and from where she was standing, Hermione could see his eyes widen and his entire body stiffen. He didn't relax until she had pulled away, and even then a muscle jumped in his cheek, telling Hermione that his jaw was clenched.

Almost instinctively, she sought Ron's reaction, which was to roll his eyes. She wasn't the only one experiencing a distinct lack of surprise at Ginny's behaviour.

"Ron," Hermione said, her voice high and nervous, yet still somehow too loud for the otherwise silent room, "when is your girlfriend coming?"

He shook his head. "No idea—whenever she feels like coming."

"Your father and I are looking forward to finally meeting her." There was no mistaking Molly's tone of voice for something benevolent, even eager. A frisson of pleasure rose up in her chest at the knowledge that she and Harry weren't the only ones yet to meet Mystery Girl.

The six of them hovered in a circle long enough for Hermione to formulate an escape plan: she would leave to pick up her parents, and stop off at the office on her way to retrieve the case files. If things remained as lively as they were just now, she would have the perfect excuse to slip away.

*

Upon apparating back to 12 Grimmauld Place an hour later, with a parent attached to each arm and a large stack of magically shrunk manila folders in her purse, it became immediately apparent why Ron had kept his girlfriend's identity secret for so long.

It wasn't just that she was showing more skin than the rest of the guests combined, although that would have been enough to make Hermione dislike her on the spot; nor was it the curled lip and obvious desire to shrink away from the antics of Teddy and Victoire, rather than pronouncing the expected phrases of delight.

It was that the woman Ron had invited over for Christmas dinner was Pansy Parkinson, bane of her teenage existence, who had mastered the art of being a bitch when the rest of the children her age were learning the most basic of insults.

She wasn't sure which was worse: that Pansy Parkinson was currently using her sofa as a makeshift throne before which Ronald Weasley (and any other male with a weakness for ample cleavage) could prostrate himself, or that Pansy Parkinson was currently sporting a ring, crusted with winking diamonds.

An engagement ring.

Any thought that had ever crossed Hermione's mind about the positive effects of Ron's girlfriend went the way of polar icecaps under the influence of global warming. Pansy had obviously lured him into her trap with large doses of filthy, disgusting sex, thus blinding him to the fact that she was a horrible human being who probably drowned kittens—no, puppies—in the endless free time of the too rich to be employed.

Maybe she had even used Imperius; there was clearly no end to the woman's nefarious deeds.

Still, she had promised Ron that she would be nice—as though she had ever been anything but—so nice she would be.

Before stepping forward towards the couch, she checked over her shoulder to make sure that her parents had settled into a conversation with someone—she wasn't about to bring them nearer to the Muggle-hating cow than was strictly necessary—and smoothed her skirt.

"Hello, Pansy." Deep breaths, swallow the hostility: she could do this.

Pansy's eyes narrowed. "Hermione."

She sat on the opposite end of the sofa, facing her arch nemesis and attempting a pleasant smile, which probably bore more resemblance to the expression of a constipated wombat than anything.

"You're Ron's, er, fiancée, then, I take it?"

Pansy held out her hand and studied the ring, before turning her stare onto Hermione. "One might say that."

It was worrying, how quickly she could be reduced to the state of a neurotic, insecure first year in the space of a word. Seated next to Pansy and her red silk dress that wouldn't have been out of place at a cocktail party, Hermione knew she probably even looked like a first year—petite, mousy, and lacking anything that might be mistaken for curves. Hermione had even dressed the part, with a plaid knee-length skirt and grey blouse.

She wondered if it would be too obvious if she ran upstairs and changed.

"So, how did you two meet?"

Pansy's eyes shifted from suspicious slits to wide-open disbelief. "When we were eleven, we got on this thing called a train that took us to a magical school where all the little magical children go so that they can learn to wave their wands and do magic. Ron opened a compartment door in my face, and, if I recall correctly, it made me want to hit him and make the rest of his life as miserable as possible."

"Marriage is the only way to achieve the desired result," Ron said, appearing on the far side of Pansy to hand her a glass of wine.

Hermione was saved from having to reply by Victoire's younger brother, Antoine, tumbling headfirst into the coffee table. His screams had a magnetic effect; everyone in the room except for Pansy, Hermione, and Ron descended upon him in an attempt to soothe his wailing.

"Ronald," said Pansy, covering her ears and wincing, "whatever else happens, promise me that we will never have children—it would bring an entirely new level of pain to hangovers."

Even from across a noisy room, the words reached Molly's ears, and Hermione could see her expression darken. Recalling her own days as potential daughter in law, Hermione had an idea of how that conversation would go, and found that she was torn between sympathy for the other woman and glee at the possibility of Pansy being taken down a peg.

Ron, who was slightly more used to the sounds of injured toddlers, but no more fond of them, nodded vigorously, and Hermione used the opportunity to escape to her study.

"Well, it's been lovely catching up, but I have work to do," she said brightly, as she sidled off the couch and in the general direction of the stairs.

"Yes," Pansy replied, "lovely."

"Ron, you'll call me when dinner is ready?" said Hermione.

"Of course."

*

It only took fifteen minutes to arrange the files in a way that allowed her to look at as many of them at once as was possible. Photographs of the victims lined the walls in chronological order, with the notes from each crime scene tacked beneath. Each picture had a sticky note attached to it, with the victim's gender and place of death, along with, for lack of a better word, his or her species. She ran through each category, trying to establish a pattern.

Six of the victims were female. Until the latest murder, they had alternated between male and female—now there had been two males in a row.

Stonehenge only continued the southward pattern of murder sites.

Eight of those killed were werewolves. Three centaurs. One merman. And one who had presumably been Muggle. Loosely, all except for the last could be classified as half-breeds.

At heart, Hermione was an arithmancer, and, although arithmancy involved variables, it also required constants and the skill to keep the balance. An equation was, in her opinion, a simple and elegant metaphor for the universe; things could shift, but only in conjunction with everything else, and, scientifically speaking, nothing could be created or destroyed.

The problem with life was that it too often felt like solving a three variable equation, in which the constants had to first be derived through some obscure formula that she hadn't yet worked out how to solve. She knew that the answers were possible, that all the necessary information was there, but in order to use it she would have to comb through a lifetime of calculations to find her mistake.

"Love what you've done with the place," said a voice from behind her. "Very macabre—the cobwebs in the corner add a nice atmospheric touch."

Hermione whirled around, about to snap at the person who was invading her sanctuary. Relieved to find that it was only Ginny hovering in the doorway, she smiled. "Come in."

As Ginny settled into the armchair, Hermione shut the door and took her usual seat behind the desk.

"I hope I'm not disturbing you—I just couldn't take much more of Mum's disappointed looks and Harry following me around like a lost puppy, hoping I'll throw him a bone."

"And I don't actually have to work today—I just…"

"Pansy?"

Hermione nodded, and tried not to smooth her skirt self-consciously. "It was a bit of a shock."

"She's not that bad, you know—just give her a chance to warm up to you, go shopping with her… It can't be easy for her, knowing that none of Ron's friends like her."

"Did you _know_?"

Ginny didn't have to reply—the answer was scrawled in red across her cheeks. The floor seemed to spin out from under her feet, and she had to clutch the edge of her desk to keep from spiralling away. It didn't stop the sensation of her stomach dropping out, leaving her hollow and shaken.

"I only found out in October—she was with him when he visited me in Paris…"

"He took her to Paris?"

"It's where he proposed."

Silence stretched across the room, and Hermione felt helpless in the face of it. A few moments passed before she realised that she was shaking her head in quick, sharp bursts, and took a deep breath. When she finally spoke, her voice wobbled.

"Two months? Without telling anyone?"

Perhaps more earth shattering than anything else was the revelation that Ron could be discreet enough to carry on a secret engagement.

"If it helps, I don't think they meant to keep it secret for that long.

"Never mind that—tell me about you. How is living in France and playing quidditch and being famous for it?"

As Ginny launched into a story about partying with the Danish national team, and their horde of screaming blond fans, Hermione shook her head, this time to clear it. If even Ginny had accepted Pansy as a surrogate sister and taken her shopping, then there was no arguing with the logic of it. Ron had let a viper into the nest, and he would have to deal with the nasty rash it left him.

Ginny's tale about waking up next to a Danish groupie, who was nearly in tears over having slept with a player for the opposition was only the first of many.

"You have to understand," she said, midway through recounting the blind date a team mate had forced her to go on with his part-Veela lesbian friend, "that these are all the stories I can't tell at the dinner table. Granted, they might disgust Harry enough that he will never want to touch me again, but I wouldn't want to give my father a heart attack. He's not as young as he once was, and stealing away any remaining illusions he may have about my virtue would probably kill him."

Hermione couldn't deny the truth of that statement. "And your mother would hardly handle the truth any better."

"Mum's much worse than Dad—rather than giving in to any sort of heart condition, she would pack up and move to France, so that she could keep an eye on me. She already tries to manage my life from a distance."

"She tries to manage mine, and I'm not even related to her."

"Well, now that you almost definitely—"

"Definitely."

"—won't be marrying into the family, unless Charlie straightens out, she may decide to leave well enough alone, but I wouldn't count on it."

*

The table, Hermione noticed when she and Ginny were called down to eat, had been organised into two camps: those who liked and approved of Pansy, and those who did not. The pro-Pansy half was larger than Hermione would have expected; Bill and Fleur sat to one side of her, and the three of them seemed to be deeply involved in a conversation revolving around stocks and bonds, and George had snagged the seat next to Ron, prime seating for ogling the neckline of her dress, a fact that did not escape Angelina's attention. Even Antoine seemed to have come back with a positive verdict, and was reaching out from his perch on his father's lap to grasp a handful of Pansy's hair.

The other half of the table was headed by Molly Weasley, who was flanked by her somewhat bewildered husband and Percy's expression of scandalised outrage. Andromeda couldn't bear the sight of anyone who didn't trip over herself to admire Teddy's multi-coloured tufts of hair and delicate lisp, and found Pansy's apathy towards her grandson insufferable. Caught in between the two camps were the Diggorys--invited the first year after Voldemort's defeat because Molly had bonded with Eustacia over the loss of a son--and her parents, who were sitting closer together than was probably comfortable and shifting their gaze along the table, obviously aware of the tension, but not the dynamics that had created it.

Hermione slid into the chair between her parents and Fleur. Polite, she thought. She didn't have to be friendly, just civil, if Pansy chose to speak to her at all. Besides, her parents would require attention--these weren't their sort of people, and making them feel left out at an event to which she had invited them was the last thing she wanted.

She was trying to mend bridges, not throw up a flashing barricade signalling that they had no place in her life.

As soon as the hum of conversation started up again around the table, Lindsay Granger turned to her daughter. "You've lost weight again, dear, and you look exhausted. You really must stop working so much."

It was her mother's diplomatic way of expressing her disapproval of Hermione escaping to her office when there were guests to be entertained.

"Sorry, Mum, but I'm in the middle of an important case, and I can't afford to let it sit."

"But surely no one expects you to work on it over Christmas."

"Kingsley should be here shortly, if you want to ask him."

Lindsay's mouth thinned; she didn't believe that there was a politician in the world worth working for, and refused to listen to Hermione's protests that he was more Auror than bureaucrat. "He's still in charge, then?"

"Yes, and currently finishing up an important bit of goblin legislature that should help with our inflation problems." That might make her mum happy; she had always expressed disgust at the exchange rate when it came time for school supplies shopping.

It didn't; instead, she merely sniffed. "About time if you ask me."

And, because she obviously wasn't feeling frustrated enough, Bill had to lean across his wife and cut into their conversation. "It _is_ about time. Gringotts has been trying to get the Ministry to erase laws discriminating against goblins for the last two centuries. If that is finally done, it should cut back on costs enormously."

Fleur had been nodding along with her husband; now she squeezed his and added, "Eet is a great pleasure to finally see these changes 'appen. We 'ave been 'elping ze goblins with their cause for six years."

"It's how those two met, actually," said Bill, gesturing towards Pansy, who was looking from Bill and Fleur to Ron as he argued with Angelina over whether the Cannons or the Harpies had a chance at winning. "At one of our fundraisers."

"So, let me get this straight," said her father. "You have a subjugated race—sorry, species—in charge of the only bank in the country?"

Lindsay elbowed him. "Gary, there's no need to be rude."

"I wasn't being rude, I was asking a perfectly valid—"

"'E is correct, and zis is exactly what we 'ave been trying to tell ze Ministry—eet seems there is finally someone willing to pay attention."

Hermione's mind was still trying to wrap around the notion that Pansy Parkinson had been at a fundraiser for goblin rights.

"The thing with Kingsley Shacklebolt," Pansy said, cutting to the heart of the conversation, around which everyone else had been dancing, "is that everybody likes him. He's a war hero, but he was working in the background, so Voldemort's former supporters don't feel uncomfortable around him, and he has been nothing but fair since."

If fair meant doling out about a hundred pardons to people who, by all rights, ought to have spent the next fifty years in prison. However, she had to concede that Pansy had a point: the pardons had diffused a volatile situation that could have left the still powerful purebloods feeling disenfranchised.

It didn't mean she was about to revise her opinion of Pansy as a stupid cow.

"So," Molly said, looking up from her conversation with the Diggorys, and the entire table seemed to freeze in place, "Ron, why don't you tell us about your fiancée—I'm sure we're all dying to hear about her."

The colour in Pansy's face vanished, only to reappear a second later in Ron's.

"Well—er—"

"I can speak for myself, thanks," said Pansy, in the spoiled, huffy tone that Hermione remembered. "What do you wish to know?"

Molly flushed a shade of pink to match Ron, but in anger instead of humiliation. "I only ask because we've heard so little about you."

"At least, from Ron."

"I have no idea what you mean."

Pansy raised an eyebrow. "Oh, really?"

For a moment, Molly and Pansy sat in a deadlock, neither sure what more needed to be said, until Ginny broke the silence, saying, "Ron, you haven't shown me your animagus form yet."

He leapt to his feet. "No, I haven't."

"Not while we're eating—"

But it seemed that his eagerness to show off his newfound skill overrode his usual Pavlovian reaction to his mother's voice, and a moment later he was an Irish setter.

Ginny clapped her hands in delight as Ron ran a circle around the room, stopping to wag his tail at Pansy, who tossed him a broken off piece of bread. When she leaned over to stroke his ears, he thrust his nose into her cleavage.

"Haven't you heard what happens to pretty girls who lie down with dogs?" George asked, with a wink.

"I wouldn't know—I make him sleep on the floor."

The last of the tension disappeared as the room dissolved into fits of giggles—even Hermione had to grin. Ron put his ears back and whined, the whipping of his tail slowing to a steady wag, apparently aware that he was the focus of their laughter.

However, as he began tearing around the room again, this time with his eyes rolling and a panicked bark, the laughter died away, replaced with concern. When he finished circling the room, he ran into the hallway and proceeded to bark and snarl.

"Just a moment," Pansy said, crumpling up her napkin and setting it on the table. "I'll see if I can calm him down."

George snickered, and Angelina smacked him.

The murmur of a soothing voice was followed by a sharp knock on the door, and Pansy's footsteps towards it. When she screamed, Hermione led the sprint away from the table.

What she saw upon entering the foyer was the last thing she expected. Pansy was frozen in the doorway, with Ron—human, now—wrapping his arm around her shoulders. Just beyond them was a figure that made the breath catch in her throat and her mind begin to hurtle through thoughts at lightning speed. Only one made it to her lips.

"Professor Snape?"


	3. Chapter 3: Zombies in the Night

**The Proper Care and Feeding of Zombies**

**Chapter 3: Zombies in the Night**

The first clue that the death of Severus Snape had not been a hoax was the fact that he looked exactly the way he had on the day of his death—which was to say not well at all. One would have thought that if he had spent the interval alive, he would have dressed his wound and perhaps applied a touch of disinfectant.

And, then, there was the faint bluish tinge to his lips and fingers, which said, quite distinctly, that he was not a living, breathing person.

None of this seemed to deter Pansy, who had flung herself into his arms and was sobbing into his shoulder. After a moment, she drew back and wiped her eyes, smearing her eyeliner across both cheeks and turned around to face Ron.

She hiccoughed once, a strange mixture between a laugh and a sob, gesturing helplessly. "This is my fiancé."

"Ronald Weasley? I thought you had better taste."

From behind, Hermione could see the red creeping up Ron's neck and ears as Pansy said, "He's the only boy who would let me put him on a leash."

That set her off a second time, this time into the crook of Ron's neck. It was the first time that Hermione had seen them standing side by side, and Hermione couldn't help but notice that they were nearly the same height. No wonder he no longer felt the need to hunch over in an attempt to look shorter—he was dating an Amazon.

Next to the two of them, Snape—who had always seemed so tall and commanding in her memories—was dwarfed.

The silence stretched on, only broken by Pansy's muffled sobs, until Hermione heard a crisp, calm voice ushering everyone back into the drawing room. It took a moment to realise that it was hers, and that everyone, including Snape, was obeying.

A cool trickle of clarity spread up her spine and into her thoughts as everyone settled into seats, including Snape. It was quite clear that he was an inferius, and, though they were hardly her specialty, she knew enough to be aware that they rarely brought glad tidings. For the time being, he seemed harmless enough, but she was nevertheless glad that there were two fully trained Aurors in the room, with the former head of the department on the way.

A quick glance around the room told her what she needed to know—that nobody was about to panic. Molly seemed to have been shocked into silence, Amos Diggory and his wife were huddled on a loveseat with twin looks of horror, and her parents appeared to be nothing more than puzzled, making her envy their ignorance of the magical world. Pansy was sandwiched in between Ron and Snape, both of whom seemed perfectly content to follow her lead.

Hermione caught Harry's eye and motioned for him to join her. "What do you think?" she whispered.

"He's definitely not like any Inferius I've ever seen—I mean, he talked."

"That's what I thought, but I didn't know enough about them to be sure. Anything else I should know?"

"Er… That they're fucking hard to get rid of?"

"Lovely. So, if something goes wrong…"

He nodded. "Oh, and since I have your attention—has Ginny said anything to you about me? She's acting oddly, and I'm not sure…"

"Harry, there is a time and a place for asking this sort of question, and, believe me, this isn't it."

"Ah," he said. "Right."

"However, I'd be happy to hear your thoughts on Pansy."

"Pansy? She's hot."

She felt as though she had been slapped in the face for about the tenth time that day—fortunately, she was beginning to be immune to the feeling. "And also a giant bitch?"

Harry shrugged. "That can have its perks."

"What about Ron?"

"His thoughts on Pansy? I should think that's pretty obvious."

The look she gave him would probably have withered an entire forest. "I meant, would he know anything about Inferi?"

"We could ask him."

Harry tried beckoning to Ron, but he was too busy staring at Snape in bewilderment to notice. Pansy nudged him, and the two of them stood and walked over as a unit.

"Before anyone says anything," she hissed, "I want to be perfectly clear that Professor Snape is going to be taken care of, and that there will no killing, maiming, debilitating, or damage to him of any kind."

Harry and Hermione exchanged a glance. "You do realise that he is potentially dangerous?" Hermione said.

"Potentially?" Pansy snorted. "Whatever the hell he is, he definitely isn't an Inferius—they don't talk or have personalities."

Some of the confusion cleared from Ron's face. "Then what is he?"

"Fuck if I know," Pansy said. "I only know about Inferi because the Egyptians were fond of using them as guards in their tombs. Gringotts likes us to know about this sort of thing, because they do so hate training new curse-breakers."

"You work for Gringotts?" At least it explained why she had been at a fundraiser for goblin rights.

"I do have a life outside of annoying you and sleeping with your ex-boyfriend, you know."

"Ladies," Ron said, "I know I am irresistible, but can we please try to focus?"

There was a brief moment in which Hermione and Pansy were united in twin expressions of scepticism. Harry stepped in before they could speak, in a valiant move to save Ron's ego from irreparable damage.

"So, what should we do?"

"Kingsley should be here in an hour or so—until then, I can research and see if there is any information about unusual types of undead."

"I'd rather like to finish my dinner," Ron said, as Pansy rolled her eyes but failed to completely disguise her amusement.

"You would."

"Snape can come up to my study, since I doubt he's what most people want to look at over dinner," Hermione said. "I can also question him and see if he knows anything about what brought him back."

Harry furrowed his brow. "By yourself?"

"I'll have my wand, and if that doesn't help, I'll just jump out the window and levitate myself down."

Ron sniggered. "Like the time that experimental potion blew up, and you broke your ankle?"

"Oh, shut up."

*

The first thing Hermione did was to find Snape an old turtleneck of Harry's. Although the wound didn't seem to be festering, that didn't mean she wanted to spend the rest of the day staring at the place where Nagini had torn into his neck.

"Does it hurt?" she asked, not really sure what sorts of painkillers worked on animate corpses, but not wanting to be inconsiderate.

"Not particularly, although I feel as though it should."

"At least it seems to have clotted."

She turned around so that he could change without scrutiny, and flipped open her laptop. The search results for 'zombie' were overwhelming, and most likely useless; she clicked it shut and set it back onto her desk, settling for a notebook as she turned back to face him.

"So, on a scale from one to ten, how alive are you feeling right now?"

"Obviously not very."

"Your throat doesn't hurt, you said, but can you feel this?" Undeterred, she prodded his wrist with the end of her pen. He twitched away from the contact and nodded.

"Close your eyes, and hold out your wrist," she said. "I want you to tell me when you can feel the pen."

"And I want you to tell me if any of this serves a purpose."

"I just want to check—"

"My vitals? I haven't got any—I'm dead."

"And I suppose that you have some sort of brilliant idea to explain what you're doing here, when earlier this week you were tucked up in a snug little coffin?"

"Awfully eager to get rid of me, aren't you?" His lip had curled up into a snarl, and he was backing away from her with narrowed eyes.

"Actually, I'm awfully eager to find out who decided to use a ritual killing at Stonehenge to try and raise the dead, but your option is beginning to sound more and more appealing. If you don't want to answer my questions, then I suggest you sit down and start talking of your own accord."

If Pansy had been in the room, Hermione would have probably been turned into a pile of smoking ash on the spot. As it was, Snape's glare, given enough time, might do the trick.

"Fine," he said, taking the seat behind him.

"Lovely."

"Where would you like me to start?"

"With whatever you remember."

He paused and took a deep—and probably unnecessary—breath. "I woke up in the dark and thought that you idiots had buried me alive."

It was the sort of remark to which she had no immediate reply—just an overwhelming sense of claustrophobia, of the inability to breathe. The only way to counter it seemed to be with a question to which she knew the answer, even if it did expose her to the pointed part of his tongue.

"You don't recall being dead, then?"

A curtain of lank, tangled hair tumbled in front of his eyes as he shook his head. "I remember the Shrieking Shack, and then—and then there was just light. And that was it."

Even with his voice muffled, she could tell that it had a strangled quality to it, even if she couldn't quite put her finger on why.

"Until you woke up."

He nodded, and his hair parted around his face so that his expression was no longer obscured; his eyes were focussed on something just beyond her, jaw clenched. "There was a period of time where I couldn't move—not because I didn't want to, but because I was completely stiff. That was when I realised I wasn't breathing, and that I couldn't possibly be alive."

With the same empty gaze and flat tone, he related to her clawing his way out of the ground, only to have his suspicions confirmed by the patches of ice on the ground—he had died in the summer. However, it wasn't until he reached a train station yesterday afternoon and saw the date that he realised how much time had elapsed.

"Seven years," he said, shaking his head, "and I didn't feel a second of it go by."

"But why come here?"

He shrugged, and fixed his eyes on hers for the first time. She shuddered; they were cold, dead, but with a spark of intelligence, a touch of warmth glimmering in their depths.

"Potter will never give up this house, so I knew that someone, at least, would be here. Besides, where else was there to go?"

*

When all the other guests had begun to trickle out, Luna, her father, and Kingsley Shacklebolt had just alive, and were nibbling on heated leftovers. Her parents exchanged worried glances as she descended the stairs to hug Andromeda goodbye and hand Teddy his gift.

"You can't open it until tomorrow morning," Hermione said, as he began to tear at the wrapping. "You know the rules."

He scowled, and she knelt down so that they were at eyelevel. "I'm terrible, I know—but please tell me that I still get a hug."

His hair shifted from dark blue to pink, which meant that he was no longer sulking about being forced to leave his cousins. With the inexplicable shyness of a seven-year-old faced with the attentions of a grown-up, he wrapped his hands around her shoulders and kissed her cheek.

"What do you say, Teddy?" Andromeda took his hand as he stepped back.

"Thank you."

Just beyond them, Pansy and Ron were saying goodbye to Bill and Fleur, who were struggling to bundle their children into scarves and coats. Victoire was insisting that she could do up the buttons all by herself, and fighting off Fleur's attempts to fix the lopsided attempt, whereas Antoine had latched himself onto Pansy's leg and was wailing at the top of his lungs.

Pansy tried to step out of his grasp and stumbled backwards; Ron caught her as Bill descended onto his son and tried to make a game out of putting on mittens.

As Ron and Pansy fell into each other, laughing, it occurred to Hermione that she was glaring at them with narrowed eyes, and she turned her back on them to go find either her parents, who would want to be taken home, or Kingsley, who desperately needed a slap.

Kingsley was the more easily located of the two options—he was in the kitchen, rummaging through the refrigerator in search of beer. His carefully honed Auror senses didn't seem to be dulling in the slightest, as he turned to face her before she had shut the door behind her.

"I take it you've heard about our Inferi problem? I spent the last three hours preparing a press release detailing how we plan to handle it…"

He looked too exhausted for her to feel comfortable about hexing him into oblivion, so she settled for a grimace. "Er… yes. Only they aren't exactly Inferi, and we very possibly have one in the house."

All traces of exhaustion disappeared with the straightening of his shoulders. "You let an Inferius in the house? Are you completely insane?"

"Terribly sorry that I didn't send you a memo when I cracked—all this working when I'm supposed to be on holiday, you know."

"And when you are killed by animated corpses I'll have to find someone else half as competent to pick up the pieces."

"Theo should do well on his own; just make sure that you let him carry a bucket around to crime scenes in case he feels ill."

"Clever attempt to distract me, but, believe it or not, Auroring did leave me with some interrogation skills—and since I know you aren't an idiot, do you mind telling me what possessed you?"

"I, er—I think it may be one of those things that you have to see for yourself."

*

There was a certain element of humour in watching Kingsley Shacklebolt prodding open the door to her study with the tip of his wand. Several elements, actually, starting with the wide-eyed, slack-jawed expression of terror, and ending in the faint trembling of his wand arm.

"This is Auror stealth?" she whispered. "Because, silly me, I thought there would be stealthiness involved."

He ignored her, pushing the door open another inch, then crouching. When he was certain that nothing was lurking within a couple of feet, he lunged, casting a silent _Stupefy_.

The flash of red light hit the bookshelf on the opposite side of the room and sent several books tumbling off the shelves. Snape, who was sitting in the armchair with a periodical on Arithmancy, looked up and smiled.

"Why, Kingsley, how good of you to drop by. I'm afraid that I wasn't quite prepared for visitors—I'm just getting caught up on some reading. One of the drawbacks of being dead is that there aren't many books lying around."

Kingsley had gone white, and was fumbling behind him for the door handle; when he found it, he used it to brace himself. "You're right—that is definitely not an Inferius."

"I could have told you that," Snape said. "In fact, I've already told her."

Hermione attempted to carve 'I Told You So' into the back of Kingsley's head with her glare. It didn't work.

"But you are dead?"

"Either that, or I've brought new meaning to 'deathly pallor'."

The two men stared at each other for what seemed like years; Kingsley shocked silent and Snape looking little more than mildly irritated.

"Sorry to leave such a riveting conversation," Hermione said, "but I should probably take my parents home. I'm sure they're bored out of their minds right now. If it makes you rest easier, Kingsley, I've already tested him and he can't do magic."

"So if I want to attack you, I'll have to use my brutish zombie strength to do it." Snape set the book aside, expression mild except for the faint glitter in his eyes.

On her way down the corridor, she nearly ran into Pansy and Ron, who were either engaging in an arcane cannibalistic rite or making out, but managed to skirt them just before Pansy half-threw Ron against the other wall. Clearly Molly had, at long last, relinquished her death-grip on the dirty dishes stacked in the kitchen sink.

She found her parents sitting on the sofa, listening to Luna and her father describe the process of catching a triple-horned snorkack with polite interest.

"They're particularly fond of socks," Luna was saying, "so it's important to sprinkle pixie dust in front of the entrance to one's wardrobe to keep them from getting in…"

"Mum, Dad, are you ready to go?"

Both of them nodded and practically leapt to their feet, following her to the front door.

"Darling," Lindsay said in an undertone as she adjusted her scarf around her neck, "is that girl quite all right? In the head, I mean?"

"That's just Luna."

"Imagine what her poor father must have to go through to take care of her—nodding along to that rubbish."

"Mum," said Hermione, "believe me when I say that Luna is the sane member of that particular family."

From the doorstep, Hermione disapparated with her parents into their front hall and hugged them goodbye with a promise to see them tomorrow. Rather than returning home right away, she apparated to an alley a few blocks away from Grimmauld Place and walked the rest of the way, glad to finally have a moment alone.

Sleet—more snow than anything, now—pelted down around her, soaking into her coat and making her shiver into the damp fleece. She quickened her pace, finding satisfaction against the sound of her feet slapping against the wet pavement and slipping through the slush.

Questions that had piled up in her mind over the course of the day were now allowed free range. There were too many of them to address, or even attempt to answer, and everything seemed to stall at the fact that she had—for lack of a better word—a zombie in her study.

It sounded as though it ought to be the title of a children's book, alongside _The School Nurse Is from Mars_ and _There's a Ghoul under the Floorboards_.

Then, of course, there was the even more shocking and potentially traumatising piece of information involving her ex-boyfriend and her worst enemy, but she was setting that aside for later, when she felt emotionally equipped to contemplate the implications.

Which would preferably be never.

Twelve Grimmauld Place loomed ahead of her, and she climbed the steps and slipped in the door, hanging up her jacket to dry and heading up the stairs.

From the drawing room, she could hear the mingled voices and laughter of Luna, Xenophilius, and Harry; since Kingsley's voice could usually eclipse everyone else's in the room combined, that meant he was probably still in the study with Snape, and she didn't want to make any guesses as to what Pansy and Ron were doing.

Believing it to be disgusting was hardly conjecture.

Twenty minutes and a scalding shower later, she found herself barrelling into a dishevelled and sweaty Pansy wearing little more than patches of strategically positioned black lace and a red silk robe cinched at the waist; before she had a chance to consider the many reasons she had to be bitter about running into Pansy Parkinson when wearing nothing but a towel—in her own house—she was being dragged the rest of the way down the hallway, into her bedroom.

"Well, I heard the rumours when we were in school, but I hadn't thought you'd be quite so blatant about it," Hermione said. "And before you ask, I don't do threesomes."

"You poor, deluded creature."

Hermione tried to cross her arms, which resulted in more towel slippage than she was comfortable with. In the name of modesty, she settled for hugging her ribcage instead; just because some people insisted in darting around in their unmentionables didn't mean she had to follow suit.

"What do you want?"

"You don't like to waste time, do you? If I were to say that I was hoping we could paint each other's nails and stay up all night swapping stories about our first kisses, I hope you would feel bad about being such a bitch."

It was difficult to appear nonchalant in a towel that was half-drenched by one's dripping hair, but Hermione did her best. "And you have the right to complain?"

"It's not a right, it's a responsibility."

Hermione knew of several hexes that could have wiped the smirk off of Pansy's face—the only drawback was that her wand was in her purse.

"Anyway, I didn't want to talk to you to reaffirm that my tongue is sharper than yours, I wanted to tell you that I have information that might help you out on your case."

"You want to help me?"

"No, I want to help you help Professor Snape and Theo." She paused, studying her nails before shooting Hermione a sly look. "And if Lucius Malfoy gets a broomstick shoved up his arse in the process, I'm all for it."

The amount of restraint it took to keep herself from rising to the bait probably deserved a shiny plaque and a cash reward, but she managed to keep her face smooth and unquestioning. "Yes?"

Pansy pursed her lips, obviously disappointed. "It might interest you to know that there are a few books on necromancy in Malfoy Manor's library—some rare ones that even Gringott's curse-breakers don't hear about."

"Broomstick up his arse, you say?" For the first time in her life, Hermione could feel blind hatred blossoming into love. "I'm sure that can be arranged."

It was Pansy's cue to sweep out of the room and back into the bed where Ron was doubtless waiting for her, but she lingered a second longer than necessary, relaxing and tightening her lips as though she wanted to say something, but thought better of it. Hermione twisted her mouth into a grin as Pansy edged out of the room.

*

Her goodwill towards Pansy lasted until she stumbled out of bed and down the stairs the next morning, to find her sitting alone at the table in paisley pyjamas that were slightly too tight in the bust, but otherwise too long—Ron's. Hermione grunted out a greeting that was half 'hello' and half 'good morning', then stalked over to the cupboard, taking out her displeasure on the porcelain dishes.

Rather than suffering through a silent breakfast, she cupped her bowl of cereal in her hand and climbed the stairs to her study.

Eight hours of sleep had done more than just erase last night's sudden stab of fondness for Pansy Parkinson; she had also completely forgotten about the slightly less troubling problem of keeping someone who could probably be classified as undead in her house.

She screamed and nearly dropped her bowl, he jumped and sent the book he had been reading flying into the wall, and the two of them froze, staring at one another with matching guilty smiles twitching across their faces.

"Sorry," she said, setting her breakfast on the desk for safekeeping and handing the book back to him. "I didn't mean to startle you."

"I was the startled one?"

"I'm sorry for shrieking at the sight of you."

"Ah, so we get to the heart of the matter."

She smiled, and retrieved her laptop. "I won't disturb you if I sit in here, will I?"

"It's your room."

They lapsed into a comfortable silence, only broken by the turning of pages and the click of keys under Hermione's fingers. She hadn't anticipated any striking new developments to appear on Christmas Day, and it appeared that she had been correct; nevertheless, she skimmed through all of her usual news sites before running a search on Jennifer Bartleby and her group of neo-Druids.

Being almost completely certain that the murder could be pinned on Lucius Malfoy meant that she would have to exhaust all other areas of inquiry, just in case she had to prove it wasn't their other suspects. As she worked her way through Bartleby's webpage on—probably historically inaccurate—Druid ritual and worship, an owl pecked at the window. She rose to let it in, but Snape beat her to it, removing the special Christmas edition of the _Daily Prophet_ from its legs and tossing it to her.

A glance at the front-page headline sent icicles shooting out from her spine into her fingertips; it was a moment before she could bring herself to move and unfold the paper the rest of the way so that she could see the article.

"Oh, fuck," she murmured. It took an effort of will to remember to breathe as she scanned the article.

Snape looked up from his book, alarmed. "What is it?"

She held up the paper so that he could read it for himself: "War Casualties Are Home for Christmas."

Although he probably couldn't read it from where he was sitting, names leapt out at her from the body of the article: Fred Weasley, Colin Creevey, Cedric Diggory, Alastor Moody, and Nymphadora Tonks.

And the name that wasn't in the article, but belonged to the dead man sitting in front of her. Severus Snape.

"I see," he said, finally.

"At least you're not alone." Her attempt to sound bright and encouraging was more morose than anything; more zombies to deal with, in addition to their sobbing families, did not a chipper Hermione Granger make.

She left the room, then, without a word, peering through the crack in the doorway to be certain that Pansy hadn't returned to bed before slipping in and leaving the paper folded open on Ron's night table, where he wouldn't miss it.

*

She spent the rest of the morning flat on her back on the sofa, occasionally opening her laptop to look something up, but otherwise she fixed her gaze on the ceiling. Harry brought her tea; Ron, worried that she was sulking over his choice of girlfriend, made his peace offering in the form of chocolate; and Pansy was parading her friends through the house one by one to Hermione's study, where Snape received them, like some sort of priest with the ability to absolve them of their sins.

Ron hadn't said a word about the article, or the knowledge that his brother was currently in the same state as Snape, merely sank into the chair on the opposite side of the room as Hermione and sank into the same contemplative silence.

When she was certain that Pansy was nowhere in earshot, Hermione rotated her head so that she was looking at Ron. "Pansy Parkinson? Really?"

"Really."

It occurred to her that she was obsessing. Not jealous—she had been over Ron for years—but deeply concerned. Besides both being at least six feet tall, they had absolutely nothing in common. A relationship was bad enough, but marriage? It would be nothing short of a disaster.

There were so many questions to ask: how, why, how could he? If they had decided to form an orderly queue starting in her temporal lobe and working their way out onto her tongue, she might have been able to articulate them all; as it was, she could only stutter and hope that he would manage to extract some meaning from the sounds.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner—it's just that we spent the first two months being totally disgusted by each other, and then after that… It was nice to have something that was finally mine, you know? And then the longer I put it off, the harder it was to tell you."

The trouble was that she did know—the three of them, it seemed, had always shared everything, from near-death experiences to dates, which would be carefully dissected before a verdict could be reached. For a period of time, it had even been Harry and Ginny, and Hermione and Ron, but that had been even more suffocating, and she had missed the Ron who said inappropriate things and made her laugh.

She'd had to break up with him to get that back.

A sudden, horrible thought struck her that, if true, would make the entire situation infinitely worse. "What about Pansy's friends? Did they know?"

He was saved from having to answer by Theo bursting in, attired in what looked like liquid rainbow. At first, she thought that her eyes were lying to her and that the combination of serial murders, zombies living upstairs, and the world's failure to invent caffeine that could be injected straight into the veins had sent her off the deep end, but it soon became clear that some poor, misguided fashion designer had gathered together every last sequin and stitched them onto Theodore Nott's robes.

"Where is he? I left the Christmas party as soon as I got Pansy's letter."

"Snape?" Hermione asked, eternally practical, at the same time as Ron said, "Oh my God, my eyes!"

"I was in the middle of intense sexual relations with a Hufflepuff, when I was called away to witness the miraculous event and grabbed the first thing that I saw."

"Hufflepuffs at the Malfoy party?" Hermione snorted. "That would be on par with me receiving an invitation."

"Okay, so someone let Blaise Zabini's new stepfather drink half a bowl of punch, and then challenged him to a transfiguration competition. My robes may or may not have got in the way."

"Theo?" Pansy's—well, technically they were Ron's—socks slipped on the rug as she sprinted around the corner and launched herself into his arms. The embrace was complicated by the fact that she was several inches taller than she was—in the end, she settled for draping her bosom over his shoulder. "He's upstairs," she said, voice muffled by his sequins.

As they left the room, Hermione turned her attention back to Ron with narrowed eyes. "He didn't seem terribly surprised."

Ron shifted to a cross-legged position, glancing at every patch of carpet except for the one surrounding the sofa. "That would be because he's not."

She stilled the lurching in her stomach, and forced herself into a state of calmness. If she could handle serial murders and decomposing bodies on a regular basis, she could handle being stabbed in the back by, it seemed, all of her friends.

"What about Harry?" she asked. His answer didn't matter—she didn't care. Knowing the truth was more important.

"Do you think he could keep a secret from you for longer than five minutes? Of course not."

And the sigh that was rippling through her was not a symptom of relief.

"Besides, I didn't expect him to react as well as he did—of the two of you…"

Ron knew better than to finish the thought, bless his ginger soul. He didn't need to. If Harry, who couldn't stand in the same room as Draco Malfoy without turning puce with rage, who couldn't stand the thought of Hermione dating someone whom he deemed unworthy (such as intelligent, sensible Terry Boot), could accept Pansy in stride, why couldn't she?

Then again, Harry had never experienced the full force of those lips twisting at him, felt the snag of her barbed words catching under his skin. Harry had been to Pansy as Hermione had been to Malfoy—someone who was shot at because of his proximity, not the real target. That had been an honour bestowed only upon her.

Ron patted her hand, and stood to leave the room. "Why don't I make you a cup of tea and bring you your laptop? Research will help take your mind off things."

Like Pansy Parkinson invading her study, and the rapidly approaching and almost certainly awkward dinner with her parents.

His words restored a block of confidence, and reminded her that this was still Ronald Weasley, and he knew her better than nearly anyone else in the world.

"You'll get used to her, I promise," he said.

It would have been nice for her smile to be effortless; nevertheless, it was a smile, and she supposed that was what counted. "I suppose I'll have to if I want to keep you around. Someone needs to keep me supplied with tea."

*

Dinner with her parents came as nearly a relief—all afternoon, Twelve Grimmauld Place had been filled with Slytherins forming a mass pilgrimage into her study. When Ron had brought her the laptop, Millicent Bulstrode, who was clawing at the casing, asking where it kept its brain, had accompanied him. At the sight of Hermione, she froze and glared suspiciously, before shrugging and sitting on the floor opposite from her, and peppering Hermione with questions.

Explaining a piece of technology that she didn't fully understand to someone who had never seen a battery-operated toy was a bit like flinging herself from the Tower Bridge into the murky waters of the Thames. Repeatedly.

When Draco Malfoy joined them half an hour later, asking if the laptop would bite him if he stroked it, and whether or not it had a name, she had the strange sensation of being folded into a community without her consent. It was a community that had fought against Harry, that had wanted to kill her and everyone who fell into her genetic category, and that had bullied her and her friends on sight.

When Malfoy asked how the laptop felt about being named Geraldine, she nearly broke into a lecture on why understanding was a key element in tolerance, and that it was no wonder Purebloods and Muggleborns had been at odds for so long. Only the return of Theo managed to soothe her boiling rage.

That wasn't to say that Christmas dinner was a pleasant affair. By the time Hermione and her parents sat around the table, they had lapsed into an uncomfortable silence only interrupted by the scratch of knives across porcelain.

"So, Hermione," Lindsay said, digging a valley into her mashed potatoes, "why don't you tell us about your latest case?"

"Er… there isn't really much to tell. I mean, it's not really something I'm supposed to talk about." She fiddled with her napkin and took a sip of wine, trying not to focus on the sag of her mother's shoulders that was growing as pronounced as the lines tanned into her face.

She might have been able to blink it away, had it not been for Lindsay's quiet, "I see."

A quick glance in her father's direction told her that he was staring at her with raised eyebrows, chin resting on his knuckles.

"Okay," she said, setting her fork and knife neatly side by side, and swallowing the mouthful of food. "You know the murder at Stonehenge? And the man who turned up at the door last night? That's part of it."

As she sank into the story, she realised the lowering of her father's bushy eyebrows was directly proportional to the amount he leaned forward, and how some of her mother's lines smoothed from her forehead until she looked like the woman who had guided her through math problems and listened to her read aloud as a child.

They still worried about her, she realised. Even as they were afraid of her—they were more afraid for her, more afraid of losing her, this time for good.

She finished with what appeared to be the result of the most recent killing—for lack of a better word, zombies. It was a final flourish on a wildly preposterous tale that her parents wouldn't possibly believe, and for a moment they couldn't seem to manage anything more coherent than outright denial.

She really couldn't blame them.

But then her father surprised her by clearing his throat and straightening his glasses. "So, this has happened before, you're saying?"

"Serial killings, yes, but none quite like this." Even days after the fact, the mutilation of the last corpse had the power to make her stomach roll.

"And you've been working on this for nearly a year, but didn't tell us?"

"Sorry, Mum. I didn't want to worry you."

Of all the insensitive, idiotic things she could have said, that was the worst; the way the blood drained from her parents' faces told her more than any words, and she had to fight to keep back the apologies that were flooding onto her tongue.

She hadn't wanted to worry them when she erased their memories and sent them to Australia, either.

Their fragile truce flexed under the weight of deep breaths from all corners of the room, but held.


	4. Chapter 4: Invading the Manor

**Chapter 4**

**Invading the Manor**

She arrived home well after midnight, to a beautifully empty house; Harry, Ron, and Pansy still appeared to be at the Burrow, and, as was tradition, it seemed probable that they would stay there for the night.

Thank God. If she never saw another person again, she would die a happy woman.

Technically, she thought as she stumbled into her office, Snape didn't count as a person. It would still be possible to die with a smile stretched across her lips, as long as he didn't speak to her.

But it seemed rude to not so much as acknowledge his presence as she scanned the shelves for something to read, so she pasted on something that, on a better rested person, might have passed for a grin. His response was to flip a page.

Right, so ignoring him it would be.

After several minutes of failing to find the book she was hunting for, she was forced to break that resolution.

"You haven't seen my copy of Mortimer Klapp's _Alchemy of Death and Dying_, have you?" Perhaps a bit tasteless, but she finally had an idea worth pursuing.

He held up the book he was reading so she could see the spine.

"Ah—I suppose you wouldn't want to part with it for about half an hour, would you?"

"If you want to read about the theory behind necromancy, there are much more involved texts, in this very room."

"But they don't discuss entropy in as much detail, and that's what I want him for."

"You mean his theory of life as entropic—life-force gradually moving from a pure state downwards until it becomes too impure to function?" He snorted. "That hasn't been a commonly held belief since the sixteenth century—purity is a myth you'd do well to rid yourself of."

"I see being dead hasn't cured you of your cynicism—"

"Death is its ultimate manifestation: the accumulation of nothing but chaos."

"Following the course of entropy?"

She raised an eyebrow as he inclined his head slightly. "Touché."

"Anyway, I wanted it more to remind myself of how he connected necromancy and alchemy—it might prove useful."

Another snort. "Nothing more than a tidy metaphor."

"Does it matter if it helps?" She held out her hand, but made no move to snatch the book away. "Please?"

"You have the rest of your life to reread it—I only have this brief space of time before the spell runs out."

Her hand fell to her side as her eyes narrowed. "The only people who play the guilt card are the ones without a worthwhile argument."

"I use what works."

With a shrug, she sat behind the desk and pulled her laptop out of the bottom drawer—she had locked it away in the hope of keeping it safe from further inquisitive Slytherin visitors—and pulled up a search engine for what felt like the millionth time in the last four days. Klapp was no longer copyrighted; with any luck a like-minded and technologically savvy witch had uploaded it for her.

*

She woke up to find herself still in the chair, but instead of her laptop resting under her cheek, there was a pillow. Which was strange, because usually when she fell asleep in the middle of working on something, personal comfort was rarely the first issue on her mind.

Snape didn't appear to have left the armchair, although he had a new book in hand, and several others scattered around his feet. On the corner of her desk, stacked on top of her laptop, sat the annotated edition of _Alchemy of Death and Dying_ that Snape had been flipping through the night before.

She grunted an indistinguishable string of syllables that might have been distinguishable as 'good morning' if she had been living in a cave several millennia before the present time.

He seemed to grasp the meaning; without looking up, he said, "I marked any passages that might be relevant to your research, and can think of several other sources that expand on his ideas in more practical ways."

"Thank you."

It wasn't until she was halfway through her first cup of tea that it occurred to her to feel touched; this was certainly the more kindness than he had ever directed at her during the six years he had taught her.

Charming the teapot to hold its heat, she levitated her tray of breakfast up the stairs and into the study. A glance at the clock on the way by told her that it was early—too early for her to expect interruptions for the next two hours, besides whatever Snape had up his sleeve, which meant she might actually manage to form a working theory or two before meeting Theo at the office. There were plans to be made, autopsies to be examined, and suspects to be questioned—in short, a mystery that had been put off too long needed to be solved.

Most days, she resented having to share an office with Theo; he was intelligent, but needed to talk things through to reach a flash of brilliance, which meant that most days she wanted to strangle him to cut off the ceaseless flow of chatter. Snape, on the other hand, seemed to work in much the way that she did—with quiet method, and silently. He had, it seemed, put the time she had spent sleeping to good use. Her copy of _Alchemy of Death and Dying_ was so marked up, now, that she might have raged at him for defacing her property, except that each scribble in the margin sent her barrelling down a new avenue of thought, in the general direction of epiphany.

If he hadn't been scowling so ferociously at his newest selection, she might have kissed him.

*

When she arrived at the Department of Mysteries three hours later, it was to an unpleasant shock. It was bad enough that Pansy Parkinson had invaded her private life, but she had always thought of work as a sort of sanctuary. Work was for dealing with bad things that happened to other people, not the daily annoyances of her own life.

She was sorely tempted to slap Theo for letting that smug nose behind her desk—with any luck, Pansy had already sabotaged Hermione's filing system and hidden all the quills in an improbable corner of one of the drawers—but she kept her feet planted in the doorway.

"Any word from Hopkins?"

He nodded. "She sent me the report. Our victim—whose name, by the way, is William Falstaff of Bristol—was killed by a blow to the head, which was followed by strangulation and the slit throat."

"How pleasant."

"Redundant, really," Pansy said.

Really, she deserved some sort of international award in diplomacy for not asking why Pansy was there.

"Pansy is going to help us infiltrate Malfoy Manor," Theo said.

"I didn't realise we needed to infiltrate—can't we just get a warrant?" Some part of her was cringing at her inner bitch, who was making her say the words, but she covered that up by calling to mind all of the things that Pansy had done to deserve it.

Or, at least, the first twenty thousand that came to mind.

"The Malfoys have lived in the Manor for the last four hundred years," said Pansy, "and have owned the grounds for at least as long as Hogwarts has been in existence. Do you really think that a scrap of rolled up parchment from the Ministry is going to get you the answers that you need?"

Then again, she had a point.

Her face must have reflected her state of inner turmoil, because Theo interrupted. "We've concocted a plan."

"A cunning plan?"

"Very cunning indeed. I'm going to arrive at the Manor under the pretence of being forced to question Lucius Malfoy, and you two are going to follow me under Potter's invisibility cloak—"

"I so don't want to know what you had to do to get your hands on that."

Theo glared at Pansy. "I asked politely. Where was I—oh, yes… You two are going to follow me under Potter's invisibility cloak until we get inside, at which point you head towards the library—Pansy knows where it is—and hunt down the necromancy books. I should be able to stall Lucius for about two hours, so you two will need to keep track of the time and be back in the entrance hall within an hour and forty-five minutes. Uncle Lucius likes me, so if all else fails I can ask him to retell the tales of our ancestors or something."

There was no mistaking the disdain in Hermione's voice as she asked, "Don't they have wards against this sort of thing?"

"Trust me," Pansy said, "the problem with Malfoy Manor is not the getting in; it's the getting out."

*

Pansy was too tall for sharing the invisibility cloak to be anything near comfortable; it hovered a few inches off of the ground on Pansy's side, and dragged behind Hermione, through the mud on the side of the road. It was frustrating enough that Hermione was nearly able to forget where, exactly, they were going, and whom they were going to see.

Hermione tripped over the hem of the cloak and had to bite back the irritated words that sprang to her tongue.

"Can you stop stealing my half? The entire plan is based off of no one seeing us, which isn't going to happen if my legs aren't covered."

With a sigh, Hermione hefted up the cloak, wincing at the draft around her ankles. She would have commented on it, except that Pansy was making enough noise for the two of them, and Theo kept shooting warning glances over his shoulder to where he thought they were standing. He was about ten feet off.

She shivered into her robes as they approached the main gates, where two white peacocks paced, looking damp and less than pleased with their lot. For a moment, it looked as though one were about to charge them, but it settled for waddling under the branches of the nearest tree as a fresh downpour washed over them.

"Idiot birds," Pansy muttered under her breath.

"Haven't they got somewhere dry to keep them?"

"Of course—and a house-elf will be in a great deal of pain later today if they aren't moved there soon."

On Hermione's unofficial hierarchy of beings, peacocks came in somewhat lower than house-elves—although she didn't approve of leaving anything out in the rain when there were warmer alternatives—and she had to fight back the urge to dart out from under the cloak and shepherd the peacocks inside. As though sensing what she was being tempted to do, Pansy took hold of her arm and pulled her closer.

"That hurt!" It was hard to remember to keep her voice down when those blood-red nails were digging into her forearm, but she managed, if only because her voice squeaked high enough that it cut out entirely.

"Not as much as it will if Lucius Malfoy catches you trespassing on his property—have you read any Wizarding property laws lately? They were mostly written by his ancestors in the mid-thirteenth century, with a couple of amendments in the 1750s."

"But we have a warrant."

"Look at it this way—the Manor is like its own little country. England ends at those gates and doesn't start up for about seven miles in that direction, and all the ordinary rules of civilisation that keep us from eating each other? They do not exist."

The spark of fury in Pansy's expression was like lighting a match; Hermione wondered if light could shine through the invisibility cloak and, if so, whether any would notice the ball of rage working its way down the path. Everything in the stiff lines of Pansy's face, her posture, her face said, _Don't push me_, and Hermione knew better than to ignore the warnings.

"Bad break-up with Malfoy, then?"

Theoretically.

For a second, she was convinced that Pansy was going to rip the cloak away and slap her, but that second flowed into the next and, as quickly as it had come, the tension ebbed.

"Draco can't help that he doesn't like women."

In front of them, Theo pulled out his wand and sent a silencing spell at them. It took all of five seconds for Hermione to counter it, but the reminder was sharp; the steps up to the entrance were only a few paces away, and they couldn't afford to make a mess of their one and only plan.

A house-elf answered the door, and spent what felt like hours pontificating on 'kind Master Nott' who was 'so very kind to visits us, and so soon after Christmas'. In ordinary circumstances, Hermione would have been disgusted by the creature's servility, but her feet were going numb, and Pansy still hadn't let go of her arm so that was numb too, and the smell drifting out from the open door—a mix of pine-scented cleaner and a sort of dignified must—had passed through her lungs and shot straight to her stomach until she thought she was going to be sick.

It was the smell of insanity, the smell that had filled the holes in her memory when she had—when they had—when Fenrir…

She hadn't thought that Pansy's perfume was particularly subtle when they had first pulled the cloak over their heads, but she was grateful for it now, because it meant she could suck in deep breaths of lavender and it would mean that she could ignore the pressing of memories.

The dizziness faded to the inside of the Manor. Sometime in the last few minutes, she had collapsed into Pansy, who was steering her away from the direction in which Theo was being led—not towards the drawing room, thank goodness—and into the heart of the house.

"Are you going to be able to manage, now?"

She wished that she could detect a note of sarcasm in Pansy's tone, hunted for one, even, but could only find quiet concern. Sarcasm, she could deal with; Pansy treating her like a human being was … weird.

Rather than saying something that would provoke another argument, she nodded and straightened, tugging her hair out of her face. The real reason for Pansy's presence was being shoved into clarity—it had nothing to do with navigating the bowels of the Malfoy family home, and everything to do with keeping Hermione from completely losing her mind.

She wasn't sure whether she ought to feel touched by Theo's way of showing his concern, or insulted.

The last hitches smoothed out of her breathing as they entered the library; regardless of the numbers of house-elves being instructed to clean, there didn't seem to be a way to clear the dust from the air. It smelt of the winter afternoons she used to spend curled up in her mother's study when the covers of books started to curl from the damp, weekend hunts through used bookshops, and the Hogwarts library, which had been more home than the dormitory she had slept in during her school years.

Pansy let go of her arm, and pulled the cloak off of them, turning her attention to warding the library door as Hermione wandered into the stacks. It was difficult to hate a house that held such a magnificent library, regardless of its owners; as though to prove it, she reached out and stroked the nearest spine, drawing her fingers away and examining the dust that stuck to them.

No, not difficult—impossible.

"Right, so under the usual Forgetfulness Charm, I've used a diluted version of a curse for temporary paralysis that I learned from an Egyptian tomb. Anyone who tries to break through it, should be stuck in place for at least a few hours."

"Isn't that a bit much?"

"But so much more fun." Pansy turned to face the far corner of the room. "If I remember correctly, we found the necromancy books over here—Theo said you knew a copying charm?"

"Well, invented it, technically." She had been shocked and appalled to discover that the magical world didn't have a Xerox equivalent—no wonder so many pages had been torn out of library books.

"Great, you can teach me how to do it, and we can speed the process up."

The ease with which Pansy found the correct shelves and was able to point out which books were rare or otherwise non-existent made Hermione's eyes narrow in suspicion; she pushed it down because Pansy was being helpful—also suspicious—until she caught the other girl flipping through the pages of one of the particularly rare and ancient tomes with her eyes alight, and a faint smile on her lips.

Just as she was about to open her mouth and let out a furious lecture, it occurred to her that she needed Pansy to get out of the Manor. Diplomatic, then—she could manage that.

Without pausing her copying spell, she said, "So, how do you know your way around the library so well?"

It was meant to be conversational; in the silence that followed her words, it occurred to her that it sounded rude.

Pansy didn't seem to mind—she laughed. Then again, maybe polite would have been more bewildering than anything. "You mean, why am I flipping through the pages of a book full of dark, evil magic with fond reminiscence?"

"I, er, didn't mean it that way."

"But it's what you were thinking."

"Well…" Not something that she could deny, particularly since her cheeks were warm and her eyes downcast.

"If you must know, when Draco, Theo, and I were teeny tiny evil children, in the summer after first year, Draco's favourite pet Kneazle died. We thought he was going mad with grief when he started spending every waking moment in the library, but it all became clear when, after a week of research, he emerged with the plan to stage a resurrection."

"And of course you went along with it."

Pansy looked insulted. "Of course—what else were we supposed to do? Leave him to wallow?"

"Better than blowing up Wiltshire accidentally."

"We were children—we didn't believe in consequences. Besides, it was a very long, boring summer up to that point, and we probably would have blown up Wiltshire anyway to get some excitement. And Draco had his heart set on an undead Kneazle, and we knew better than to say no."

And that was the difference between purebloods and Muggleborns, Hermione thought, scowling. During her summer vacations, she had been forced to cut the magical part out of her, forbidden to use her wand. The only things that had kept her from believing that term-time had been more than an elaborate hallucination during her first summer away from Hogwarts, had been the trunk full of magical books and the occasional owls from Harry and Ron.

When she had been curled up in her bedroom, reading textbooks in a frantic attempt to feel connected to her world, her classmates had been raising the dead.

She noticed Pansy looking at her, brows furrowed, and she straightened, turning the page and copying it. "What happened to the Kneazle, then?"

"Lucius found out right before term started and was… not very pleased—that was right around the time when the Ministry started increasing their raids. He made us watch when he ended the spell, and buried the body."

Which told Hermione that he knew enough about Inferi to get rid of them without much effort. At least they seemed to be moving in the right direction.

They spent the next hour working in silence, concentrating on copying as much as they could, as quickly as possible. Although Pansy was right, and it was probably among the most extensive necromancy collections in the world, it wasn't large—there were only so many ways to animate a corpse, and even fewer to bind someone's soul to it. Not to mention that research in the field had been illegal for the last three centuries, which meant very few published their findings.

As Pansy slid the books into their gaps on the shelf, Hermione bound the copied pages and shrunk them, slipping them into her bag.

"We have plenty of time," Pansy said, glancing at the clock, "so let's not get caught on the way out."

Hermione nodded, and flung the invisibility cloak over the two of them.

It was the work of seconds for Pansy to undo her spell, and a slightly feral grin spread across her face at Hermione's noise of surprise. "Wouldn't do us much good if we couldn't leave, would it?"

Leaving, she found, was easier than going in had been. There were a few close calls with house-elves rounding the corners with feather dusters, and a heart-stopping moment when Narcissa swept through the corridors, presumably to grace Lucius and Theo with her presence, but Hermione and Pansy had drawn together and were barely breathing, so she passed by without noticing them.

The clock in the entrance said that they only had five minutes left, and Pansy was beginning to fidget.

"Lucius isn't friendly enough to keep up a conversation this long," Pansy whispered. "Theo's probably been poisoned—he never remembers to pack a bezoar."

"I'm sure he's fine," Hermione replied, although a knot of fear was beginning to form in her stomach.

"Or they've trapped him and are forcing him to flip through the entire genealogical history of Wizarding Britain—they always leave it sitting out in case conversation begins to wane."

It was obvious that Pansy was attempting flippancy, but her tone was brittle—her great-great-great grandfather had probably married a Muggle, and the Malfoys did not approve.

They stood in silence for nearly half an hour, leaning against the wall, until Hermione's legs were aching to sit down. Pansy had begun to fidget with the lining of the cloak; Hermione wondered if it created a ripple in the wallpaper to the observant eye.

"Well, at least we know that he can't be dead," said Pansy, after they had been standing in the hall for nearly an hour. "They would have disposed of the body by now, if he were."

"They could be planning to blame it on the house-elves."

"No, unless you can prove the house-elf's insanity, that one never works. We have to accept that he is being subjected to a fate worse than death."

"The genealogical history of Wizarding Britain?"

"No, that one only takes an hour or so—everyone's related, so it's really just a giant family tree. They've probably taken him to the portrait gallery."

"Ah," Hermione said, trying to sound as though she knew what that entailed.

"It means we'll be sitting here for hours."

There were, of course, bonuses to being Muggleborn. True, she hadn't been resurrecting her pets at the age of twelve, but neither had she—or would she ever—be led around a room and expected to make polite conversation with her entire ancestry; she suspected that the ones who only spoke Old English would be the really tricky bit.

"I'd say we ought to rescue him," Pansy continued, "but it wouldn't exactly result in the level of secrecy that we're hoping for, would it? Besides, he knows better than to get into these situations."

"You don't think he's already left, do you?"

Pansy snorted. "Of course not—have you ever had a conversation with him? When he wants to talk, there is no non-violent way to shut him up."

She was right; part of what made Theo such an effective interrogator was that he could do it without the other person catching on. He was polite and conversational, and would gradually lull the interrogated into a false sense of security, working in the questions almost reluctantly, as though they were an irritating but necessary formality. Relaxed people, he said, made poor liars.

He was practically a human lie detector.

It didn't surprise Hermione in the slightest that he had managed to pull through the war without picking sides—he had the innate ability to make you believe that he was on your side when he was in the room, and by the time that you worked out he wasn't, he would either be far enough away that it didn't matter, or have you wearing magically reinforced handcuffs.

He did the same thing when he was seducing someone. Sometimes she pitied Harry.

"Maybe we should at least check on him, anyway," Pansy said, after another moment's pause. "I'm sure he's fine, but I don't want to leave him alone with Lucius and the portraits for too long. It's enough to drive anyone insane."

"And if he leaves without us?"

"He won't. With the tracking spell he has on us, he'll know where we've gone, and I'm sure he can talk about the furniture long enough for us to get back and make our escape, if we can't find him."

Hermione shrugged. "Well, I'm sure it will be more interesting than standing here whilst he talks to his great-aunt Ermintrude."

She tagged behind Pansy as much as she could with out leaving the safety of the cloak, and tried to push away the last tendrils of anxiety at the thought of being trapped inside Malfoy Manor for the second time; she almost succeeded. Even passing by the room in which she had been tortured didn't send her into her earlier panic, although she did turn her eyes down to Pansy's feet, forcing herself to stare at the contrast of the sharp black lines against faded baroque rugs. It wouldn't do to get caught up in her memories a second time—she didn't want to have to explain to Pansy, not when she had been unable to tell Harry and Ron the full of extent of what had happened.

They'd been tortured by people who enjoyed it, which was bad enough, but for the sake of information. She supposed she ought to be grateful that they had given her a reason to hold back: she had been more afraid of Fenrir than of Bellatrix, and the knowledge that he would have her once the others had what they needed was the only thing that held her back from sobbing out every last scrap of information that she had picked up.

Pansy didn't need to know that. Harry and Ron didn't, either—they had been relatively safe in the dungeons at the time, and angering them more than they had been to begin with would have only got them all killed.

A thought made her freeze, mid-step. Pansy kept walking, and a moment later the protective shroud of the invisibility cloak had slid off of her, leaving her exposed and stumbling in the direction in which she thought Pansy might have gone.

"You idiot, do you want us to get caught?" hissed a voice somewhere near her left ear.

Closing her eyes, Hermione lunged towards it, and felt the cloak settle over her shoulders.

"Again, do you _want_ us to get caught?"

"I thought of something."

"Do you know what thinking gets you in these sorts of situations? A cosy little chamber six feet underground in an obscure part of the Malfoy crypt. The only other way you'll get that sort of treatment is if you marry into the family, which, I strongly suspect, isn't the sort of posterity you're aiming for."

"Sorry," said Hermione, "but, look… The dungeons—can we get to them from here? Easily, I mean?"

"We just passed by the entrance." Pansy's eyes narrowed. "Why? You know that if they suspected Theo was trying to trap them, they wouldn't imprison him—poison is so much less messy."

"The Stonehenge victim was held over a period of several months—there were runes carved into his skin, some of which had already scarred. So if they were using the dungeons…"

"They'll have cleaned them."

"Exactly—who tidies their dungeons without a reason?"

"House-elves?"

"But it's worth a try—for all we know, they have another potential victim down there right now. Besides, all the books in the library are circumstantial evidence and aren't going to convince anyone—"

"Except for the thousands of Malfoy-haters already in existence."

She had a point. "_I_ would rather have some sort of conclusive proof that I'm condemning the right person—satisfying as finally seeing Lucius Malfoy behind bars may be, convicting the wrong person isn't going to do anyone much good."

Pansy nodded once, sharply, and, clutching Hermione by the shoulder, led the way back to the staircase.

*

The dungeons were not what Hermione had expected—the bars were rusted and could probably be sawed away in less than five minutes by anyone wielding a nail file, and the air was stale, heavy even in the dank hall.

"Word of advice, if you ever find yourself imprisoned by an ancient and noble magical family," muttered Pansy, pulling off the cloak and folding it under her arm. "Glamours are much easier than performing actual maintenance, so everything is much less sturdy than it looks."

"It's hardly worth renovating when the inmates are only going to pee all over the floor," Hermione said, peering into a cell and seeing nothing that might pass for a latrine.

"That's hardly a problem if you just don't give them water."

Silently, they lit the ends of their wands and walked the length of the corridors; each cell was empty, and coated in a fine layer of dust. If she hadn't known better, she would have assumed that they hadn't been used in centuries.

"Well, I can't say I'm surprised." Hermione extinguished her wand, and turned to face the beam of light shining down from the staircase. "There would have been wards of some sort up."

Pansy nodded, pulling the cloak back over their heads. "Of course, there are plenty of other, more subtle, places on the grounds to stash one's future human sacrifice, so this doesn't mean much. Now, shall we rescue Theo from the grasp of his ancestors?"

*

Theo, as it turned out, had not been forced to set foot outside of the drawing room; although there were one or two ancestral portraits hung above the sofas, from whom he was expected to send greetings to his mother, he had spent most of the time wrangling answers out of Lucius and Narcissa.

"Right," he said when the three of them had Apparated to the gates of the Ministry, and Hermione was shoving the invisibility cloak into her bag. "I need a drink, now. I'm positive that Narcissa has the elves slip some whisky into her tea to help her through life with Lucius, but she never offers any to her ailing guests."

"There, there," Pansy said, looping her arm through Theo's, and letting him rest his head on her shoulder. "It's why you should use that sleight of hand I taught you and bring your own flask."

"But it's far too much effort." He began wandering in the general direction of the nearest pub, and Hermione and Pansy did not protest.

"Then you deserve what you get. Besides, it's not as though they forced you to wander through the portrait gallery, so you really shouldn't complain."

"And the only reason they didn't is because I managed to distract them with a clever question about the marriage of my third cousin twice removed to the German branch of Narcissa's family."

"I told you Theo could look after himself," Hermione said, raising her eyebrows at Pansy.

"Can you blame me for being concerned?"

"Now, ladies," said Theo, offering his other arm to Hermione, "we have a great many things to celebrate on this fine day—it is not the time for squabbling over me—and if you rip me into two, you'll never learn the extremely vital information I have obtained by placing my person into the path of deepest danger."

"We are most grateful you survived," Pansy replied, snuggling closer to him and causing them to veer left.

"I don't hear any expressions of relief from my right arm."

Hermione grinned up at him. "That's because I have faith in your ability to talk your way out of any given situation."

They rounded the corner, and curled into the pub, still a linked chain until they slid into the table near the window. Pansy picked up the menu and studied it, wrinkling her nose.

"Do either of you want to split some chips? I'm absolutely starving."

"I have been stuffed full of cucumber sandwiches, and cannot bring myself to eat another bite. Besides," Theo added, flicking back his hair, "I've heard the fat content is terrible for one's complexion."

"Do I look like I care?" Pansy rolled her eyes and pulled a tube of lipstick from her purse, arching her eyebrows expectantly in Hermione's direction; she nodded.

"Yeah, I'll have some. Please."

Theo refused to tell them anything before the drinks came—Hermione hoped to speed up the process by only asking for a glass of water, but Theo cut her off in the middle of her order.

"She needs vodka," he told the server. "Something as vodka-y as the vodka gets, but is still sweet, otherwise she won't drink it—and once she's done that, she'll need another."

It was perhaps an even less effective way of taking care of her than shoving her in a building full of traumatising memories with her childhood enemy, but Theo had always expressed his affection in unusual ways—although she had to admit, once the vaguely cranberry-tinged drink arrived, that it did relax her.

After she had finished feeling as though someone was pouring bleach down her throat.

"So," Pansy said, stirring her frozen, pink concoction with a straw, "now that we are all settled in—what's the verdict?"

Theo shrugged, taking a sip of his equally pink and equally frozen drink. "The man's as slippery as they come—he makes his Legilimency seem sloppy, but he's powerful enough that you know there's no way it can be that bad."

"What about Narcissa?" Hermione asked. "Did she act like she knows anything?"

He snorted. "What, the ice queen?"

"In that relationship, she's the compassionate one," Pansy said. "And I think she's finished with anything resembling the Dark Arts—remember the bargain she made with the Wizengamot?"

"You only defend her because she didn't…" He trailed off, flicking his eyes towards where Hermione was sitting.

She made a show of staring at the table, feeling conscious for the first time in hours of who was sitting across the table from her. The alcohol rushed to her head, combining with her irritation at what she suddenly perceived as Theo's manipulation—he _knew_ that she loathed Pansy, was anything but oblivious to the fact, but had still thrown them into a situation in which he _knew_ she would be vulnerable…

"You can tell her," Pansy was saying. "It's the only thing about me that she won't judge."

Which was a lie—Hermione was determined, with renewed vigour, to loathe as many of Pansy's features as was humanly possible.

"Pansy is a half-blood."

Except for that. "Oh," was all she was able to manage for the first minute, followed by, "But you were always so… so…"

"Desperate?" Pansy busied herself again with the lipstick, but didn't manage to hide the ironic twist of her lips behind her compact mirror. "Don't worry—I was painfully aware of it every minute of my life."

Maybe the vodka amplified the effect of Pansy's revelation, and maybe it was just the feeling of having to revaluate all of her assumptions in the space of a second—regardless, the room began to twist and lurch around her, and she had to take a fortifying sip of vodka before it righted itself.

Tossing the straw aside, Pansy polished off the rest of her drink, and proceeded to do the same to Theo's. "I know it's terribly cliché, but every generation has its child who needs to be brainwashed back into being sensible—I was so very fortunate that my father decided to be his generation's rebel. He met my mother the Muggle—I don't know where or how, actually, but presumably he met her and fell in love with her enough to forsake his family, and all of the usual events leading up to tragedy took place, but we were all very happy, until the Dark Lord caught wind of the depraved mixing of Muggles and purebloods, and killed her to teach Father a lesson."

It was a touch too melodramatic to be taken at face value, but a glance at Theo and the hint of revulsion in Pansy's voice told her that it was as close to the truth as she was going to get.

"I've heard it was all by request of my grandfather, although he knew better than to tell anyone. My father took me back to his family, and spent the next few years losing his mind as my aunt brought me up—most people, including the Malfoys, assumed that I was her daughter and didn't bother to ask questions until Rita Skeeter published an unfortunate exposé on my family after the war."

"Lucius wasn't very happy," Theo said, as a second round of drinks appeared in front of them.

"And by 'wasn't very happy,' he means threatening my aunt for feeding him lies about my parentage, and tried to stop Draco from seeing me—ironic, since that was about the time when he started experimenting. Of course," she said, looping her arm around Theo's shoulders and squeezing, "all of us know Theo's tragic tale, which is almost as tragic as mine, so there is no need to relive the painful details of that—unless you insist on continuing this conversation."

There was a strong hint of irony in the entire story, Hermione thought privately. Willing to kill for a half-blood, but forbidding his son to date one. Of course, she thought, the apparent half-blood and impoverished pureblood hardly needed reminding.

She took another sip from her drink, and hiccoughed.

*

"You shouldn't have let me have so much to drink." Hermione stumbled and clung to Theo's waist for support, and trying not to notice that the sun hadn't even begun to set yet.

"Nonsense," he replied. "It's good for drowning one's memories in, without the nasty effects of Dreamless Sleep."

She giggled as he swayed sideways and tucked herself into the curve of his shoulder, scowling at Pansy, who was somehow managing to keep a straight line in high heels, despite having had twice as much as both of them.

"Thank goodness we weren't far," Pansy said, drawing her brows together in something that simultaneously passed for amusement and disgust.

"Thank goodness one of us is Muggle and knows how to navigate the tube."

"Thank goodness one of us maintained enough sobriety to be able to read the map," Theo said, and Hermione felt a giggle well up inside of her.

"This is your idea of sober?"

"You're the one who is so staggering drunk that she can't make it into her own house."

"And you," she said, wrapping her arms around his neck and letting him lift her through the doorway, "are the one who made me this way."

"If had known you were this pliable when drunk, I would have taken advantage of you years ago."

"Are you implying sexual harassment in the workplace?"

Still giggling, she half-tripped into the kitchen to pour a glass of water—there was still far too much to do for inebriation to seem like a good idea—and nearly turned and bolted at the sight that greeted her.

Harry was hunched over a cup of tea on one side of the table, eyes locked on his trembling hands, even as Ginny brushed them with her fingertips. She drew back at Hermione's appearance, and wiped her tears away with sudden, jerky movements.

It was instantly sobering.

"Hey, Hermione," she said, her voice wobbling. She had to clear her throat before continuing. "There's still some tea in the pot, if you want some, but it's probably gone cold by now."

"Thanks." She kept her gaze trained on the sink as she filled the glass, and tried to shut out the menial scraps of conversation that reached her ears. Both of them would tell her later, anyway.

Her escape upstairs was swift and would have been silent except for the creaky floorboards. Theo and Pansy were just settling onto the floor when she burst in and tossed her bag to the floor.

"The copies that we made of the books are in there," she said, "and don't anybody go into the kitchen—I think Harry and Ginny are breaking up."

Snape glanced up from his book long enough to grimace. There was something about it that was more, well… _dead_ than she recalled it being—perhaps it was the light.

"There was shouting earlier; be happy you missed it."

A scent lingered in the air, coating the inside of her throat—one that she knew from old crime scenes and cleaning up after the Battle of Hogwarts—and now that she thought about it, he was looking distinctly green. A thought began to trickle into her conscious mind, and she let it settle in before voicing it.

"Are you—are you by any chance—"

He actually set the book down, now. "Decomposing? Ten points, Miss Granger, for stating the obvious."

"Isn't there anything you can do about the smell?"

At about knee height, Theo's head was shaking in silent mortification, and Pansy's expression reminded her of the six years of school they had spent together—disgusted, and as though Hermione were insulting her personal Messiah.

Which was probably not far from the truth.

"Well," Pansy said, "we could find a more permanent spell, or something that brings him back properly."

It was better than Hermione's immediate flash of brilliance, which was to shove him into the freezer, but she wasn't about to admit that.

"A spell that kills more people?" Theo asked. "That seems to be the basis for necromancy, doesn't it? A life for a life? Or, in this case, a life for several half-lives?"

Snape's mouth twitched, but he didn't have complete control over the movement—his cheeks sagged into their hollows more than ever, and his lips were swollen and blue around the edges. Inferi, in their expressionless determination, couldn't inspire the same revulsion as his attempt to sneer.

"We could ask Professor Snape what he wants," she said, tearing her eyes away; even as she was repulsed, her curiosity began to unravel. Questions like whether he had been decomposing at the normal rate since his revival or if it was a result of the spell beginning to wear off, and when he had begun to be aware of it flooded her mind, and she had to take a sip of water to steady herself.

Both Pansy and Theo were nodding and looking up at Snape, as though they were once again first years clustered round his feet and he was still their fearless leader. His expression was difficult to read under the drooping of his lips, but there was a spark in his eyes that made her think he was pleased.

There was also uncertainty, she realised; he brought his gaze down to his hands and studied them for almost a full minute before replying. "I think… I think I would like to know what my options are, first."

"Which is why Granger and I did this." Pansy began rummaging through the bag, until she found the miniature bound copies of the necromancy books, and resized them.

"But those are from…"

She grinned and handed them over.

"Your relationship with Weasley has done strange things to you—were you trying to get yourself killed?"

"Nonsense. It was fun, and I finally got to test out a modification I made on a spell we found guarding a tomb in Egypt."

Although 'fun' wasn't quite the word Hermione would have used to describe the experience, but as Pansy launched into an explanation of the technical aspects of the spell to Theo, who had a quiet gleam in his eye that disturbed her, she approached Snape.

"Do you mind if I run some quick tests on you?"

There were some basic spells that anyone who had contact with corpses on a regular basis knew—how long it had been dead, which stage of decomposition it was in… With his nod, she began casting them.

She had been present at his death, years before, but every test came back with the response that he was five days past death. She didn't need further testing to tell her that was incorrect.

Turning to Theo, she said, "I think Hopkins will need to take a look at him."

"Hopkins? You can't leave him in the same room as Hopkins—she'll molest him!"

Pansy looked confused; Snape just looked worried.

"The necrophilia jokes stopped being funny when we were interns, and Hopkins—"

"Yet you always laugh when you think I'm not looking."

She rolled her eyes. "Hopkins will know more about dead people than all four of us put together."

"How many times do I need to bring up working with mummified corpses?" Pansy asked, confusion turning to indignation. "And, I should add, I'm quite good at it."

Theo patted her on the back. "We're talking about examining the dead, not robbing their graves."

"Oh," she said. "That's all right, then."

Hermione turned back to Snape. "I'll just need to take your vitals—well, body temperature, mostly, but I need to sign off on pulse, breathing, that sort of thng. It's rather pointless, but I ought to pretend that I tried."

"Hermione Granger, subject to the whims of the bureaucracy—I always knew I would live to see the day."

"But in my free time, I get to solve mysteries with zombies! Who wouldn't want my life?"

He sneered, but held out his wrist without argument.

Temperature came first. Once she had conjured up a thermometer, she had him hold it in his mouth for two minutes, recorded the temperature, and made a face. Room temperature was really a shocking result.

"Well," she said, "this test indicates that you've been dead for quite some time. Let's see how the others do."

He raised his wrist to eye level, and she wrapped her fingers around it. Too late, she wished that she had thought to use a meter for his blood pressure; his flesh was bloated and squishy enough to make her feel ill.

Ten seconds, she thought, seeking out the second hand of the clock on the wall. She could hold onto him for ten seconds.

Halfway through, she began to wonder if her dizziness was the result of disgust, or something else. At seven seconds, darkness began to sparkle on the edges of her vision. With two left, her legs had begun to crumple, and, by the time ten seconds were up, the floor had rushed up to meet her.

And it all happened before she felt a single heartbeat.


	5. Chapter 5: Nausea and Necrophilia

Chapter 5

Nausea and Necrophilia

_Once a friend had told me that it was only when I was drunk that I seemed to know exactly what I wanted. And so, two months later, in the midst of the farewell party in my growing wildness - dancing, balancing a wine glass on my forehead and falling to the floor twisting round and getting up without letting the glass tip, a trick which seemed only possible when drunk and relaxed—I knew I was already running._

—_Running in the Family_, Michael Ondaatje

At first, it was like falling through an eternity of black glitter, but there must have been a moment in between in which she hung, suspended, before beginning to swim to the surface. As she approached it, the roaring in her ears lessened, and her head pounded more furiously than before; soon, her study was visible, but she had to break through a filmy, rippling surface to see it clearly.

"Are you all right?" Ginny's face appeared directly above hers, blotchy but otherwise dry.

She tried to blink away the light streaming into her, feeding her headache; when that failed, she groaned and flung her forearm over her eyes.

"Turn off the lights," Ginny said, and footsteps that sounded familiar enough to be Harry's obeyed.

With only slivers of grey winter light slipping in around the curtains, Hermione felt safe peering out at the people who had clustered around her. Harry and Ginny must have been called for after she had collapsed, which, judging by the way Theo had their copied necromancy book spread around him and Pansy was clutching a cup of tea, had been quite some time ago.

Someone had also had the foresight to roll her onto her back, prop her head up with cushions, and tie something cold to the lump that was forming on her temple.

"What happened?" she asked, struggling to sit up and failing.

Theo gestured to the index he was skimming through without glancing up. "We're trying to work that out."

"Professor Snape isn't rotting away anymore, though, so good show whatever you did," said Pansy.

She raised her eyebrows at Harry, who nodded in confirmation, then rotated her head back so she could see Snape. He didn't appear to have moved from his armchair, but there was a distinct lack of pillows surrounding him. Pansy was right: his skin was once again sitting normally, no longer bloated or sunken, and had lost its green tinge.

The smell in the room still made her throat burn whenever she inhaled, but she suspected it would take days of airing it out before it returned to normal.

"Did you know that would happen?"

"Yes, and I planned it all out, because I've spent so much time as the living dead."

She giggled, earning a derisive look from Snape, and a worried look from everyone else. "I thought you might have. So glad you didn't disappoint."

"It doesn't make sense," Pansy said, shifting onto her knees, so she could read over Theo's shoulder. "I _hugged_ him, and nothing happened."

"He also wasn't falling to pieces at the time," Theo said. "He could have taken the small amount of magic he needed without you noticing."

"I somehow doubt that."

The two exchanged twin poisonous glares, and Hermione giggled again. Ginny, who was nearest to her, rested a hand on her forehead.

"I told you we'd need to take him to Hopkins—if anyone knows anything…"

"She isn't running a fever," Ginny said, pulling back her hand. "And she's still got a pulse, so she hasn't been turned into… whatever he is."

"You're just as charming as I remember you being in your sixth year," Snape said, "which is probably fresher in my memory than yours."

Ginny grinned up at him. "Thank you—I do try. Growing up is so depressing, isn't it?"

"According to the infantile of mind," Pansy said. "The rest of us manage it well enough."

"Hopkins," Hermione said, raising her voice to the heights of bossiness. "We need to Floo her and explain the situation, and then either get Professor Snape to Mysteries and have her examine him, or convince Hopkins to come here. I'd prefer her to come to us, as I have some questions about the autopsy report, and feel a bit like jelly with some vodka still mixed in."

"You convinced her to have a drink before dinner?" Ginny whistled. "Well done."

Pansy lowered her eyes modestly. "There was very little actual persuasion involved—all subtlety, my dear."

"I promise you can all get me as drunk as you like later," Hermione snapped, "as long as we _please_ focus now."

*

One of the first things that Hermione had learned upon entering the Department of Mysteries was that owls and magical paper aeroplanes were for amateurs, and the other, lowly, less top-secret departments; the Floo network was the only reliable and relatively secretive method of communication. It was also the only method of communication that relied on a fine green powder that closely resembled the highly addictive Mermaid Scales—something she had suspected the high-ranking members of the department took full advantage of.

She had been quickly silenced when she tried to point out that Kingsley Shacklebolt, in a frantic attempt to thwart riots and total anarchy, was releasing information about the department more quickly than they could produce it. He was an Auror at heart, a fact of which the Unspeakables most certainly did not approve, and he was destroying the age-old traditions and turning them into little more than a more highly specialised and experimental branch of the Aurors.

The Floo network was one of the few traditions not banned in the upheaval, and they clung to it even when Hermione tried to convince them to perform a test run of magically modified mobile phones. Invisible airwaves sounded suspiciously like paper aeroplanes.

The fact that no one had been sold on her magical mobile idea (when she cracked the case and became head of the department, that would be her first act of kindness) meant that she had to be lowered down the stairs into the drawing room, and laid down on the sofa as Harry stoked the fire. Theo slumped onto the floor in front of her, and rested his head near hers, as Snape settled into a chair on the far side of the room with the day's paper.

"Do I have to talk to her?"

"Theo, I can barely sit up. Do you want me to shout at her from the sofa?"

"It would be preferable."

She swatted his ear. "Oh, shut up."

"If you have the energy to beat me, you have the energy to deal with Hopkins."

"Not if she's the monster you make her out to be."

Across the room, Snape coughed and raised the newspaper so that it was hiding his expression, but not before Hermione saw the smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

*

The rest of the afternoon blurred together in a fuzzy chain of events. Hermione dozed as Theo used his full arsenal of persuasion tactics to convince Hopkins to pay them a visit after hours, waking up in time to hear him drop the final bomb of bribery—that they would let her flip through their rare and recently acquired collection of necromancy texts, if only she would agree to perform an autopsy on their pet zombie.

Hermione tried to fill the next two hours with reading—if she was going to be incapacitated, she at least ought to be useful about it—but gave up when she woke up for the third time with the book lying open on her face. Instead of giving it a fourth go, she set it aside and settled for staring blankly at the ceiling.

Ron came home, and Pansy dragged him upstairs so that she could 'explain the situation to him'—which made Hermione snort with suppressed laughter—as Harry and Ginny left to continue their earlier conversation over coffee.

When Theo grew tired of reorganising their victim files, he announced that he was going to use the time to do some much needed shopping, leaving Hermione alone with Snape in absolute silence.

In her half-awake, listless state, it lost the comfort of the night before. Her inability to focus on anything practical, meant that she was focused on _him_—wondering if he was only putting up with her presence because the thought of climbing the stairs to the sounds of his former students shagging made him feel ill, or if he even noticed her presence. Since claiming the chair, he had barely glanced up, first from his newspaper and then yet another one of her books, and a part of her mind doubted that anyone, even Severus Snape could maintain that level of concentration. Even at her best, she had to pause every few minutes to take a sip of tea, or stare off into the distance to collect her thoughts.

She must have sighed as she rolled onto her side in order to see him clearly, because his eyes shot up and met hers before he straightened and shifted his weight in the chair.

"Bored?" he asked.

She nodded; his response was to stand up. For a moment, she felt the embarrassing urge to cry at the thought that he was going to leave her to her own devices until Theo returned and Hopkins arrived, but, instead of leaving the room, he walked towards her and bent over to pick up her book. Even as a corpse, he had a fluid sort of grace that she envied—he was by no means tall, but had learnt how to hold himself to create the illusion of height, and kept his movements contained.

"Are you just beginning the chapter?"

"A couple of paragraphs down, but I doubt I absorbed anything before that."

He nodded once and began to read.

It was, she knew, like an apology for the part he had played in draining her energy than something more direct would have been: unspoken, but nevertheless embedded in the care he took to keep the meaning crisp and ringing out in the otherwise silent room.

It was better than an apology, really, because she knew that he meant it.

Snape spoke in the same manner that he walked: measured, as though each syllable had been planned ahead of time, but never with anything like trepidation. The words flowed together, unlike the breathy, unsteady way in which she had always read aloud when called on in class, and she found that she didn't have to try to retain information—it slipped into her head and clung to her unconscious, even as her mind began to drift forward, searching for ways to apply the concepts that the book outlined.

It was a proper teaching voice, she thought—not one that would be able to control a classroom, but perfect for people willing to keep still long enough to appreciate it and let it roll over them.

And maybe it was an effect of being technically dead, but he didn't have to pause to clear his throat or take a sip of water—it was the sort of stamina that she had only experienced when she had slipped into lectures at various universities around the cities, and even then only rarely.

The reading lasted until Theo returned, bearing plastic bags full of food to bring to his mother, and, even when Harry returned without Ginny, and Ron and Pansy trickled back down the stairs with hair damp from the shower, filling the house up with noise once again, Hermione couldn't shake the feeling that they had shared something as intimate, in its way, as sex—perhaps even more so, because sex didn't require any sort of real understanding of someone other than oneself.

If she could have frozen the mental pictures that suddenly rushed through her head and erased them, she would have. Severus Snape was dead. This was an important fact that she needed to keep in the foreground of her mind.

Or, maybe not. If she thought about it too closely, her stomach began to churn.

The only comfort she took from the situation was that her unfortunate encounter with the undead had probably left her delusional. Any second, the boys would flit through the room in ballet shoes and pink tutus, which was and even more horrifying possibility than the previous thought.

She would never be able to tell Theo about this train of thought; first he would laugh until he cried, and then he would begin to spread the word that they had a miniature Hopkins on their hands, right down to the necrophilia.

It definitely didn't help that the book from which he was reading was a nineteenth century philosopher's tract on the dark arts in general, necromancy in particular.

As people filtered back into the room, he set the book down and asked, "Are you sure this is really relevant?"

She shrugged, which wasn't a gesture well suited to lying prone. "I know almost nothing about necromancy, except for what I read about the Resurrection Stone and how to deal with Inferi. At the moment, everything is helpful."

"Are they talking about magical theory?" Ron wrinkled his nose, and turned around on his heel, grabbing Pansy by the wrist. "We definitely don't want to be here when it gets technical."

Ginny patted Hermione on the forehead. "I'm going back to the Burrow for the moment—Mum always gets a little frantic when I'm gone for any extended period of time—but we should meet up. Loads to tell you."

Hermione tried to smile encouragingly, but she felt her stomach twist at the words: being caught up in the middle of Harry and Ginny's disastrous romance was not something that was conducive to leading a long, happy, and fulfilling life.

"Oh, and some people from school are going to be gathering together tomorrow night for an impromptu reunion at The Spinning Wand tomorrow night—you should come."

"Because everything about me screams how much I love to dance—if, by dance, we refer to sloppy, drunken gyrations with people I hoped I would never see again."

"I think Pansy and Theo are bringing some of their friends along, so it should be fun."

"Yes, that will make it so much better," Hermione shot back, but Ginny was already halfway out of the room, tossing a wave over her shoulder.

"You do realise that I'm standing right here?" said Theo. "And, for once, you're the weakened one unable to defend herself, so you ought to watch the words that come out of your mouth."

"I wasn't commenting on you, just the poor life choices of your friends."

Theo hesitated, as though considering her words. "I suppose that's all right then."

"And you used to be so bright," Snape said, with a sigh. "I see now our hopes that he would distinguish himself were misplaced."

"You haven't been around for the last seven years," Theo said, scowling. "I have become a very distinguished member of society."

"Distinguished for his sexual exploits," Hermione replied, sotto. "The papers like to hold him up as a shining example of the degenerative nature of pureblood culture."

"Only because most of Malfoy's have been so depraved that they aren't fit to print anywhere, even the tabloids. Anyway, all of that was right after the war, and I was young, desperate, and locked in a losing battle of self-hatred with myself—I've matured into a kind, caring, sensitive soul willing to experiment, and with enough experience to keep any willing man satisfied "

"Which is why you turn into a stuttering wreck whenever you're in the same room as the object of your affections."

Harry chose that moment to return, and Theo was too busy stuttering to come up with an appropriately witty response. Instead, he mouthed, "I hate you."

Hermione smirked.

Snape looked torn between utter mortification and amusement.

"I think your friend is here," Harry said, adjusting his glasses with wide eyes. "I tried to take her coat, and she threatened to impale me on the hanger if I didn't cease my misogynist attitude at once."

"We don't like your use of the word friend," Theo replied. "Personally, I prefer investigative ally."

"Then that makes two of us." Anne Hopkins swept into the room, looking even more intimidating than she did in the office, possibly because her lips had a touch of blood red lipstick, her hair was razor straight and tossed over one shoulder, and she was wearing pointy boots of black leather. When she left, Hermione knew that Theo would start making cracks about how she had been hoping to score with their undead specimen.

"Did you enjoy your Christmas?" Hermione asked, shooting a death glare at Theo.

"Very much, thank you. We visited my husband's family in Exeter—I'm actually going to apparate back this evening."

Theo's face went pale, and he nearly doubled over, like a soldier struck with shrapnel. "Husband?"

Hermione was faintly surprised, but at least she didn't sound as though the idea gave her physical pain."

"Yes, Nott, my husband." Hermione could have sworn that she saw the flash of a wink and a wicked grin before Hopkins added, "We also have two children."

"How old?" Hermione asked, wanting to make up for Theo's complete failure at exercising anything resembling decorum.

"Geoffrey is fifteen, and Evelina twelve."

Theo looked ready to faint. Hermione decided to have mercy.

"Theo, why don't you and Harry make us some tea?"

Harry's eyebrows hit his hairline. "Why do I have to…?"

But before Hermione could open her mouth to utter persuasive words, Theo had him by the arm and was pulling him into the kitchen.

"Right," she said, clapping her hands together and struggling onto her elbows. "Many apologies about Theo's inability to behave himself without involving a muzzle. Anne Hopkins, this is Severus Snape, formerly deceased and now only partially. Professor Snape, Anne Hopkins."

Hopkins took half a step forward, as thought she wanted to shake his hand, and he crossed his arms.

"You may not want to do that," he said, gesturing at the couch Hermione was draped over. "The last time someone touched me, there were some unfortunate side effects."

Hermione waved weakly, and Snape smirked, although she didn't miss the way his gaze drifted down to rest on the book laying facedown on the coffee table.

*

Whether or not Theo's speculations were correct, Hopkins certainly knew her way around a corpse. She started by having Snape lie on his back and stretch out his limbs, and then keep perfectly still whilst she examined him.

Handling him wouldn't be a problem; she had a pair of rubber gloves, and a deep dislike of touching dead things without some form of protection. Hermione supposed it was the sort of insight one only gleaned when one had spent a significant amount of time handling dead people.

As Hopkins worked, taking readings on the activity of micro-organisms and running three times as many tests as Hermione had known existed, she pulled herself up into a sitting position and leaned forward. Some, if not all of the diagnostics, would come in useful in her line of work.

When Theo came in, balancing a tray with a teapot, milk, and sugar, he scowled at her and said, "I thought you were too weak to do anything."

"I'm sitting up," she replied, "not conquering the world."

"Plenty of evil masterminds have done the very same from their armchairs."

"And Hermione is the only one in the house capable of evil masterminding," Harry said, arriving with cups and saucers.

"I resent that." Pansy barrelled into the room, bearing a book, and looking more tousled than before. "I think we've found the spell that the mystery necromancer used—well, Ron did. He's quite useful for the brunt work, as long as you give him extensive instructions."

And, Hermione wanted to add, if one promised him sexual favours, described in explicit terms, if he came back with useful information. There was no way that anyone's hair could be that mussed from a bit of light research.

Ron followed Pansy into the room a moment later, in a different pair of trousers. It seemed that her suspicions were confirmed.

"Let me see it," Hermione and Theo said in unison.

Pansy held out the book, and Theo snatched it up.

"I think I get it first—I'm the incapacitated one."

Theo rolled his eyes. "I was going to offer to share. I still will, if you promise to be nice to me."

Hermione made room for him, and patted the piece of cushion next to her. "Am I ever anything but?"

As Theo settled next to her, and sat the book across their laps, Hermione heard Snape mutter in an undertone to Hopkins, "Are they always this productive?"

Hopkins's reply was masked by a gasp, accompanied by a jolt of recognition. "The diagram has even got the runes."

*

Finding the resurrection spell was less helpful than Hermione had hoped it would be. There was nothing on the page to indicate its name, nothing to suggest that it had ever actually been successfully tested (which, admittedly, meant little), and, when compared to one of Theo's photographs from the scene, they found that the runes used were different. By the time Hopkins left, neither of them were able to muster even the smallest amount of excitement

"Well, at least it's something," Hermione said, folding over the corner of the offending page and slamming the book shut. "We know that he had the means to perform the spell."

"You were the one saying it was nothing but circumstantial twenty minutes ago."

She rested her head on his shoulder and sighed. "At the moment, circumstantial is better than the world of nothing that we have from every other angle. It gives us an idea of where to look, anyway."

"Maybe we're overlooking something," Theo said, glancing down at Snape, who was still lying prone on the floor, now with his eyes closed. "Something really obvious. Lucius said his wards were down the night of the murder, and he spent the entire evening trying to reactivate them."

"You neglected to mention that."

"I thought I said over drinks… Oh, didn't I? Sorry, I must have forgotten."

"That changes everything," Hermione said, straightening. "My next suggestion was going to be to check the records on everyone who has crossed the wards in the last week, but if they were down…"

"Curiouser and curiouser."

"Much too tidy for comfort."

"It's far too well planned to be Lucius," Snape interrupted, startling both of them. He hadn't moved since Hopkins had finished her examination. "Think of his past attempts at thwarting people."

"The diary in second year," said Hermione, softly.

"And the battle in the Department of Mysteries," said Snape. "Both times, he was bested by children. If he is your serial killer, you would have caught him ages ago, before it came to this."

"I've always thought Narcissa had the brains in that family." Theo sighed. "Silly of me to overlook the fact that Lucius can't even manage minionhood without it backfiring on him. Besides, who would he want to raise from the dead?"

Hermione let her head loll back onto Theo's shoulder, perhaps with a little more force than was necessary. "Lovely. Then we're back at square one."

There was a pause as the three of them pondered the implications of having to start from the very beginning.

"I know!" said Theo. "It was Kingsley Shacklebolt in the library with the candlestick!"

"Have I mentioned lately that you are forever banned from board game nights with my parents?" To Snape, she added, by way of explanation, "He attempted to rob the bank in a game of Monopoly."

"I was just trying to get into the spirit of the thing—it's set in the wild Americas, after all."

"I'm pleased to see that your time among the Gryffindors hasn't dulled your competitive edge, at the very least. Are you quite certain that the two of you aren't married? Because your bickering suggests otherwise."

"Oh, ew," said Theo.

Hermione was rather inclined to agree; attractiveness aside, she knew too many personal details to want to sleep with him. Ever. Nevertheless, she felt the need to put all of her weight into shoving him from the couch.

*

Hermione awoke the next morning, well rested and unnaturally perky. She had insisted on staying on the couch for the night, which meant that her neck felt permanently bent to one side, but a few minutes of massaging the knots righted it.

All but bounding into the kitchen, she put the kettle on, rescued her book from the coffee table, and ate a handful of cereal from the box—all with a cheery tune whistling from her lips. It was probably fortunate that no one had woken up yet; they probably would have murdered her without a second thought.

When her tea was finished, she laid the _Daily Prophet_ and her book out on the table, side by side, and alternated pages until the pot was empty and she had reached the last section of the newspaper. The clock told her that there was still an hour before Theo would be awake, never mind in the office; she tidied away her mess and took the stairs two at a time, feeling the distinct call of her laptop and the information it could give her.

"You sound like an overweight hippogriff," Snape said by way of greeting. "Potter had a late night—if you wake him up now, I won't get my full eight hours of freedom from the menace."

"Now I understand why there was always at least three feet between you and the other staff members in the mornings—I had always put it down to your unwashed odour, but your biting wit is just too much for us mere mortals who haven't had time to imbibe caffeine."

"How very clever of you."

"You were the one making weight jokes first thing in the morning. The only reason I haven't hexed you into oblivion is because I have self-esteem."

"I promise not to make a similar remark to Mr Weasley, then."

Hermione slid into her chair and beamed at him over the top of her laptop. "Quite."

He looked back down at his book, but, yet again, not in time to hide the amusement spreading across his face, and she had to hide a giggle of her own behind a hand.

After running a search for any new evidence in the Muggle papers, which was a useless endeavour, she clicked the top shut and tucked her files under her arm.

"Well, I'm off to work, darling. I might be late—don't wait up."

The look he shot her would have felt more scathing if she didn't have the image of his half-hidden grin in the back of her mind. "Aren't you going to change out of your pyjamas?"

She shrugged. "Theo will be the only other person in the department until after New Year's, unless Kingsley drops by, and both have seen me in much more shocking states of dishabille. Besides, I'm working under protest—this is supposed to be my holiday."

The door swung shut behind her, and she hurried down the stairs and out the door, pausing only to pull on a scarf and coat. If Snape wanted to bury his eyebrow in his hairline as he pondered why Kingsley had seen her in minimal clothing, he could do it on his own—she had a feeling that the truth would be significantly less racy than whatever he managed to come up with.

She dawdled on her way, Apparating to the gates of the Ministry, then turning her back on them and wandering along the Thames with a latté in hand until she felt certain that Theo had to at least be on his way.

He wasn't in the office, nor by the water cooler—which, he insisted, was the ideal place for an Unspeakable to hover and pick up scraps of office gossip—so, with a sigh, she resigned herself to the possibility of having to Floo to his flat and drag him out of bed. She would give him half an hour, before subjecting herself to his mother's tired annoyance: she had given up explaining years ago that it was hardly her fault Theo couldn't wake up with an alarm to save his life.

To pass the time, she began a list of the people they still had to interview—all those who had been raised from the dead, the people who had seen them, the neo-druidess cult leader, and any other magical families living around Stonehenge—if the excessive and centuries old wards around Malfoy Manor had been overpowered by the resurrection spell, then it was almost a certainty that all the other wards in the area had also been lowered.

Theo arrived as she finished putting the finishing flourishes on her list, looking every inch the professional Muggle in black trousers and a tie—which, she decided, meant that he would get Jennifer Bartleby, whilst she tackled Nymphadora Tonks, Fred Weasley, Cedric Diggory, and Colin Creevey and hoped that they proved more informative than Snape. It seemed a fair trade-off: he had the job of interrogating a woman being held in a Muggle prison who possibly knew nothing about magic, and she had the joy of dealing with parents freshly reminded of their war losses and their undead children.

"You'd do anything to get out of interrogation," Theo said, throwing the scrap of parchment back at her. It fluttered mid-air, and swayed from side to side until it touched the top of her desk.

"I wouldn't make you do it all the time, except that you actually like it."

"You forget how quickly I tire of things," he said. "Be careful, or I'll never willingly question anyone ever again."

"Next time, your options will be interrogation or reorganising the filing cabinet." She stood and pulled her coat back over her shoulders. "Choose your next words carefully."

He held his hands up at the level of his head in a gesture of defeat. "You drive a hard bargain, woman."

Handing him a folder, she replied, "Of course I do—it's all part of my charm. In that folder, is all of the information I could find on Jennifer Bartleby who, with the exception of her neo-druid tendencies, is quite possibly the most boring human being in existence."

*

Standing on the kerb in front of Andromeda's house, Hermione found herself wishing she was anywhere but there. The wind tore through her coat, ignoring layers of down and fleece, and sending a shiver through her that seemed to run through the marrow of her bones. It was a visit she hadn't let herself so much as contemplate—the idea of seeing Tonks, alive or something like, after seven years filled her with dread. Tonks had been something of a mentor that first summer after Voldemort's return; in a house filled with boys, men, and middle-aged women, she had been the only regular presence Hermione could look up to.

Hermione was older, now, than Tonks had been when she died—unless the subject became the afterlife, instead of boys and makeup, there wasn't much Tonks could tell her that she hadn't already experienced for herself.

And then there were Andromeda and Teddy to bring into the equation. Andromeda's grief at the simultaneous loss of husband and daughter had only been held at bay by her grandson's presence—surely she must know that she was soon going to lose her daughter for the second time. Teddy was old enough, now, to understand what had happened to his parents, old enough to feel loss even if the depth of it was lost until later.

There was no getting past it. Hermione had assigned herself the job, and, if she were honest with herself, she knew she wouldn't be able to walk away from the house, even if she weren't assigned to the case.

She wanted the truth; with any luck, this visit would take her one step closer.

Andromeda answered the door in a flannel bathrobe, looking as though she had aged a decade in the last two days. Hermione had her suspicions as to the cause, which were confirmed when she saw Tonks at the kitchen table, looking pale but otherwise much as Hermione remembered her. Teddy sat opposite her, picking the crust off of his toast, and barely glancing up when Hermione announced her presence by clearing her throat.

"Hi," she said. "I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"

Tonks smiled, but there was no more of her old personality bubbling to the surface than a feeble attempt at imitation could produce. "You've grown up, haven't you?"

Which Hermione was sure that she had meant kindly, but she didn't think she looked much different now than she had at seventeen: diminutive—practically undernourished—and still with hair that frizzed and tangled regardless of the amount of time she spent trying to tame it.

"How are you?" Hermione asked; once the words were out, it occurred to her how silly they sounded.

"As well as can be expected, I suppose."

Hermione did her best to paste on an apologetic smile, but knew from the stiffness in her jaw that it was as convincing as Tonks's attempt at vivacity. "I didn't want this to be our first conversation, but I'm part of the investigation into the Stonehenge murder, which means I have some questions I need to ask you."

If she could keep this conversation strictly professional, then maybe it would be bearable. Too polite to be anything but painful, but it didn't have to twist and shred her insides.

Like it was doing right now.

"Of course—shall we take a walk?"

She had barely begun to thaw from the twenty minutes she had spent staring at the house, but she nodded. "Sounds perfect."

*

Later, she would try to glaze over the conversation in her memory, only remembering the facts, which she had carefully filtered away from Tonks's voice as she related her story. She didn't need to write down the details; the story was similar enough to Snape's in structure that the similarities felt like a repetition, and differences so glaringly obvious that she knew she didn't need to worry about forgetting them.

Which was, in a way, unfortunate: it gave her that much more attention to focus on the sharp stabs driving into her abdomen. As the conversation drew to a halt, they increased their force and frequency, until her breath was being forced from her in gasps, and she only had time to swallow small gulps of air in between.

"I knew, you know," Tonks said, after a moment. "I didn't think that I—either of us—would survive the battle, but I still went—I didn't want him to be alone at the end."

Hermione thought she understood. There were always an abundance of people willing to look after babies, but no one else would have looked after Harry and Ron in the same way she had. Even after Ron had walked away from them, she had been utterly incapable of returning the favour.

"If that's why you're angry with me."

Another stab. Hermione studied a crack in the pavement to hide the tears that were threatening to spill over, and only spoke when she had finished swallowing back the lump in the back of her throat.

"I'm not angry with you—I'm…"

Emotion threatened to choke her again, and she trailed off.

She wasn't angry with Tonks, but she was nevertheless furious. When they caught the killer, she would try the resurrection spell just for the pleasure of repeatedly strangling someone who would give a seven-year-old boy his dead mother and take her away again—someone who would tease her with the possibility of raising the dead and righting the injustices of the war.

"What about you?" Hermione asked. "How are you holding up?"

Tonks shook her head and clapped Hermione on the shoulder in a gesture that was at once familiar and unexpected. "This—this spell isn't permanent," she said, voice trembling, "and I can feel myself decomposing. Mum has been feeding me with her magic, but I don't want to take everything she has."

One of the tears Hermione had been sniffling back escaped and clung to her eyelashes until she blinked it away.

"I can't really talk to my son, because I don't want him to get too attached if I only have to leave again. I'm dead. I didn't ask to come back, and I'm not sure I want to stay. It was over—I thought I was done."

Even though the previous day's experience told her it was the worst idea she'd had in months, Hermione patted Tonks's shoulder, and let it rest there for a moment. If the contact affected her, she didn't notice; she had already felt nauseated.


	6. Chapter 6: The Swish and Flick

Chapter 6

The Swish and Flick

In comparison to Tonks, the Creeveys were easy. She read off a list of questions, scribbled down the answers of Colin—still the spotty teenager she remembered—and a shabby grey man who could only be his father, and then left too quickly to feel anything resembling guilt. Even so, she couldn't quite shake Colin's wide-eyed, terrified gaze as she hurried down the street and into an alleyway, where she could Apparate unseen.

As she ducked in between two rubbish bins, a hand reached out and grabbed her by the scruff of her neck; a second clapped itself over her mouth before she could scream.

"You are the easiest person to track that I've ever met," Theo's voice whispered in her ear.

She spat on his hand, and he let go, wiping it on his trousers.

"That's disgusting."

"I'm not the creep who corners his partner in alleyways in broad daylight," she said. "You're lucky I didn't hex you."

"You wouldn't have been caught if you had been paying attention. Constant vigilance!"

"I think those six months you spent in Auror training addled your brain."

"Fortunately, I found my true calling before any permanent damage was done."

"You mean when they kicked you out because you couldn't obey orders."

He shrugged and tossed back his hair. "I've always been a rebellious spirit—the Aurors just weren't ready for my revolutionary ways."

"Like extreme laziness and a tendency to foist off anything resembling paperwork to the nearest timid trainee?"

His lip curled into the delicate sneer that seemed to be in-bred into every Slytherin she had come across. "It's called delegation, love."

"Since you're pestering me, I presume you're finished with our neo-pagan friend?"

"Yes—I mean, why?"

"Because I thought we ought to practice a little delegation of our own."

His eyes grew larger as her meaning dawned on him. "No. No. No, I absolutely refuse to—"

"Interview the Weasleys about their deceased son's return?"

"Yes."

"Lovely—you'll do it, then?" She passed over the folder that contained Fred Weasley's file. "It occurred to me that I shouldn't—conflict of interest and all that."

And she knew that Molly wouldn't want to look through her professional act—that she would take it as a personal affront and remain oblivious to the fact that Hermione couldn't let herself care too much. There was a stack of books on necromancy on the floor of her study, and she couldn't give herself a reason to use them.

She hadn't cared much for the twins before Fred's death, but she had ached for their family.

"Look," she said, "I don't mind taking the Diggorys, crazy as they were after Cedric died. But I can't face the Weasleys, knowing—they won't understand why I can't help them the way they want me to."

"You're destroying my reputation as a soulless heartbreaker," Theo told her, "and there is no point in being this gorgeous if I can't break hearts."

"Don't you think you've reached your heartbreak quota for the decade?"

His face relaxed into a grin. "Never."

"Then go break some Weasley hearts and I'll meet you back at the office in about an hour."

The Diggory's house was a living example of Victorian decoration, from the pale rose of the walls to the delicate floral pattern on the sofa and chairs; even the cup and in her hand matched the colour scheme. In short, five minutes in their house was more than enough to make her wish she had changed into something a little less comfortable.

It was reminiscent of the strained politeness of afternoon tea every Sunday with her grandparents; in fact, they probably owned the same rug.

She cleared a throat and took a sip of tea, forcing herself to study Cedric. He was by far her healthiest specimen so far: his death at seventeen hadn't been the spotty and gangly affair of Colin Creevey, nor had he undergone the years of turmoil that Snape and Tonks had. Rather, he was tall, athletic, and without the creases of worry that the rest of his generation had imprinted into their foreheads by the age of twenty.

In comparison, his parents were fluttering ghosts, hanging around the edges of his existence; the last decade had aged them, making them look more like grandparents.

"So," she said, when the clinking of teacups on porcelain saucers became unbearable, "I assume that you know why I'm here. It's not really anything more involved than a routine check, so need to worry." She wasn't going to pry their son away from them yet.

Their story was much the same as all the others she had heard—they had returned from the Christmas Eve gathering to find Cedric standing in front the of the door, and had been too overwhelmed to do anything but take him in. It had been less shocking for them, of course, because they had seen Snape's arrival at Grimmauld Place; nevertheless, Cedric's decay had horrified them at first, until they had learned how to restore him. They had taken turns giving him energy in small doses since.

Her quill scratched against the parchment for several minutes after their story drew to a close.

"Cedric," she said, when she ran out of things to write. "Why don't we go on a walk, and you can add anything you want."

Not strictly the format she had followed at the Creevey's, but Colin Creevey didn't have a controlling and not entirely stable father to deal with.

"How is it, to be back among the living?" she asked, once they had found a tree to hover under next to the garden shed.

He shrugged. "Not much different than it was before—Dad wants me to take my NEWTs in the spring, and Mum seems to think that force-feeding me is the way to keep my life-force from dwindling away."

"Ah," she said. Lovely. The Diggorys had moved from overextended grief to full-frontal weirdness. "What about you? What do you want?"

Another shrug, heavier this time. "The good thing about being dead was that I didn't have to make that sort of decision."

Although she hadn't known Cedric in school, except to look at (which she did alongside every other girl in Hogwarts), the remark struck her as uncharacteristic for the former shining example of team spirit.

"The good news is that this probably won't be permanent," she said. "But, then, that's also the bad news."

Expressions warred for dominance on his face; he settled for a neutral sigh. She sighed back.

"If you need help at any point, owl me at the Ministry. This isn't a situation you asked to be in, and I'd be happy to do whatever I can."

His eyes slid away from hers onto the pavement, and she studied the curve of his neck and the shed that lay behind it. When the silence didn't end, she took it to be his diplomatic way of refusing her offer.

"So," she said, hunting for words, "a shed. Does your dad like to fix up cars?"

Theo was sitting at her desk when Hermione returned, studying the calendar that someone had anonymously given to her for Christmas last year—three hundred and sixty-five days of hair tips. Like she needed the reminder.

"Hello, sunshine," she said, snatching it out of his hands and tossing it in the bin. "Any luck?"

"Fred Weasley had a difficult time believing I was on his side this time round. I'd forgotten he hadn't been gifted with the Inner Eye before his death, so he wouldn't have known the deep bonds I have formed with your side of the battlefield."

"You weren't on anybody's side," she said. "Don't be silly."

"As far as he's concerned, that's about the same as being a kamikaze Death Eater. It took half an hour for his mother to calm him down."

She winced. "Theo, I didn't realise…"

"Of course you didn't—mostly I'm just annoyed that I had to step carefully. It's hard to get the information you want when the person you're interviewing thinks that one of 'your kind' dropped a tonne of bricks on his head."

"If it makes you feel any better, the most information I got out of the Diggorys is that Amos has a secret fondness for outfitting old Aston Martins with magical devices. He's a half-blood, apparently, and his only form of bonding with his father was watching and re-watching James Bond films to death."

"James Bond?"

"And you have the nerve to call yourself a spy! I shall have to take it upon myself to educate you."

"That's my little Muggleborn."

She made a show of slapping him—although not too hard, as he had a tendency to pout—and leaned against the front of the desk.

"Yes, things grew awkward very quickly and dear Cedric was a wellspring for useless information—which, in my vast worldly experience means they're hiding something, so we ought to get a search warrant for their root cellar."

"Seriously?"

She rolled her eyes. "No. They're a bit crazy, but basically harmless, and probably not having much fun dealing with the constant reminder that they're about to lose their son again."

"You don't suppose that there's a way to bring them back for good, then?"

She was on her feet in a second, trying to keep her hands from balling into fists. "No, Theo. You know we can't."

"I've been thinking, you know, about Professor Snape, and we have the books…"

"No. For one thing, we'd have to kill other people to get the energy to do it—"

"I was thinking we could use chickens or cattle or something."

"Do you have any idea how many chickens we would have to kill?" she asked. "We'd probably go through Britain's entire poultry industry twice over. And, anyway, it isn't our job to control who lives and dies—if we start bringing people back from the dead, who's to say—"

"—that someone else won't try the same thing, except this time with Voldemort?"

"Or Grindlewald. Or some ancient and even more evil wizard from three thousand years ago about whom we know absolutely nothing. And Voldemort was a bitch to kill the first time round—I don't fancy going through it all again. Besides," she added, shooting him a sidelong glance, "Harry might actually die the second time, and then where would you be?"

"Searching out the solace of lesser beings every night, trying to comfort the hole that has been pierced through the depths of my soul?"

"Right in one." As his reward, she ruffled his hair, and earned an angry swat.

"Do you have any idea how long it takes me to style that?"

"That's why I do it. Anyway, I'm off—I promised Ginny coffee this afternoon, and I should probably wear actual clothing if I want to be seen in public with her."

He raised a hand in a farewell salute. "And you're coming tonight, yeah? The Swishy? Pre-New Year's Eve celebratory evening…"

Hermione choked. "I'm sorry—what did you call it?"

"The Swishy? As in, The Swish and Flick? If you haven't heard of it, I may die."

"You shall have to, then—I presume it's a club? Owned by Flitwick?"

"No, by some of his ex-students who thought it would be fun to lend dirty connotations to innocent first year lessons. Does that mean you're coming?"

"I wasn't planning on it." She made a face in response to his pout and sighed. "Maybe. We'll see."

"If the Weasley tart doesn't seduce you into going, I shall have to inform her that I don't think much of her skills."

She hovered the in doorway long enough that he could see the irritation on her face, before sticking her tongue out in a stunning display of maturity. "Goodbye, Theo."

Ginny was waiting for her when she got home, huddled in the foyer with her hood up, tossing occasional glances over her shoulder.

"You can't be thinking of going out in public like that," she hissed.

"I've already done it," Hermione replied, "but just for you, I'll run and change."

"Yes, but hurry. Any second, now, Harry will come in the door and try to make up with me."

The thought of trying to extract Ginny from that particular situation gave her the impetus she needed: practically flying up the stairs, she changed from old sweatpants into jeans and pulled on a blazer over her t-shirt. It was a matter of seconds to run a brush through her hair and tie it back in some semblance of order, sprint back down the stairs, and drag Ginny into the street.

"You can slow down now," Ginny said, breathing heavily as she jogged to keep up with Hermione's pace. "I don't think he's following us."

"I've told you a million times that I don't want to get caught up in your little spats. Besides, I thought you were supposed to be a professional athelete."

"Flying—brooms—doesn't involve much—endurance."

Hermione slowed as they reached the doors of the nearest coffee shop and held the door for Ginny, who took the opportunity to double over, panting. By the time they sat down, lattés and muffins in hand, the other girl's breathing had slowed and she was staring out the window at the people hurrying past.

Hermione broke off a piece of her muffin and chewed, hunting for a conversation opener—direct was probably the easiest, she decided, and she wasn't likely to offend Ginny. Much, anyway.

"Are you going to tell me what you and Harry were discussing yesterday?"

"I thought you said that you didn't want any part of it."

"I don't want to play referee—but I do want to know what is going on."

Ginny shook her head. "I suppose I was sick of feeling like I was leading him on, even when I felt that I was being clear, so I sat him down and told him that I don't want a relationship right now. Not with him, or anyone else."

Hermione nodded, easing her feet out of her shoes and shifting to a cross-legged position. "How did he take it?"

"He didn't seem too surprised, but he did ask me who I was seeing, which I thought rather showed that he didn't understand."

"Well, that's Harry, isn't it?"

"I just… I look at my mum, and I can't believe that she's happy with her children and her husband and her knitting—especially now that we've all grown up. What purpose is there? The entire Wizarding world knows how powerful she is—she took down Bellatrix Lestrange—but she hasn't done anything with that. Not for herself, anyway."

Hermione felt a sudden rush of gratitude for her own career-oriented mother, for whom grandchildren were optional as long as her daughter was self-sufficient.

"I know she always wanted a daughter," Ginny continued, "but I don't think she wanted one quite like me—I've always been as much of a boy as the boys were, except when I wasn't, and I don't think she's entirely happy with the ways I choose to express my femininity."

"I can see where you might get that idea."

Ginny smiled wryly. "And she keeps dropping hints about settling down with Harry, which she doesn't seem to understand would mean moving me more into the public eye than I am right now. It's bad enough popping up in the tabloids every so often as a Quidditch player, but can you imagine how it would feel to be the symbol of motherhood for the entire country? Just the thought makes me feel like I can't breathe. I love Harry, but not enough to want to subject myself to oxygen depletion, and I think he needs someone who isn't afraid of becoming a symbol."

It crossed her mind that it really was a job for Theo—vain enough to want his picture plastered across every newspaper that could get hold of his picture, self-assured enough not to be lost in the half-lies of journalism. She pushed the thought aside before she started matchmaking, which was a recipe for disaster.

"What about you?" Ginny asked. "I assume you would have told me if there were any romantic prospects on the horizon, but just in case…"

She let out a short bark of laughter. "It's been nearly a year and a half since I last had sex with anyone, never mind attempted a relationship. Things have a tendency to fizzle out by the time of the third date, and it's always with people who can't seem to move past copping a feel as they kiss you good night."

"I know the type." Ginny shuddered. "But surely there must be someone—you're young, intelligent, pretty when you decide to change out of your pyjamas…"

And here was the opening for the inevitable expression of truth. "It's been a busy year. I have been working…." She faltered at the look of absolute horror crossing Ginny's face. "A lot. There's a serial killer on the loose, and it has been taking up a lot of time."

"That's an absolute shit excuse, and you know it."

"And I've been distracted and didn't realise it had been this long, and I suppose I just haven't felt like going to the effort of finding someone."

Ginny blew her hair out of her eyes and shook her head sadly. "I can't believe these words are coming out of your mouth, Hermione Granger. I'm tempted to order you to never speak to me again, until you fix the situation."

"I'm… sorry?"

"You are coming out with us tonight," Ginny said, "and I will find someone attractive to send you home with. Someone with references as to their skill."

"And a recent STD test result form showing that he won't infect me with anything crawly and disturbing and potentially involving a rash?"

It was too much to hope for; Ginny was shaking her head again. "Do you ask every potential shag for those test results?"

"Of course not! I just… occasionally dig through their medicine cabinets looking for prescription potions to treat venereal diseases." At Ginny's look of disgust, she added, "And I usually find them, so thus far it has been justified."

"When did you become so…"

"Practical?"

"I was thinking more along the lines of creepy, but practical works, too."

Hermione grinned and tapped her temple. "It's why they assign me all the hard cases."

"Jeans? You're wearing jeans?"

The incredulity in Ginny's voice was high enough to send her seeking out Pansy's gaze for support. The only thing she found there was ample cleavage and a seemingly endless supply of legs.

Looking to Pansy Parkinson for validation—oh, God. She tried to surreptitiously glance out the window to look for signs of the apocalypse, by then Pansy had moved so that she was blocking the view, and proceeded to give Hermione a once-over.

"You've never been to The Swishy, have you? Jeans i_and/i _a cardigan? Granger, I'm not letting you go out in that. You'll destroy my reputation just by being in the same room as me."

Hermione crossed her arms and backed away from the twin piercing gazes. "I haven't got anything else."

Which was the truth—her experiences with going out tended to involve stops off at the pub after work with co-workers, which didn't require changes or sparkly additions to one's wardrobe, and official functions, which were a very different animal than a place where glitter and awful music were guaranteed to be the norm.

Pansy looked scandalised. Ginny, who was wearing little more than a strip of gold sequins covering all the important bits, had gone white and was gripping the kitchen table for support.

"I have some things I can lend you," Ginny said, speaking quickly. "There is just enough time for me to Apparate to the Burrow and back—Pansy, do you mind taking care of her makeup?"

"There's nothing wrong with—"

She was cut off by being dragged up the stairs by Pansy, who muttered, "I'm sure it's lovely if you're fifteen and going to the Yule Ball."

And that was how the pain began.

They ended up running late by about an hour, but neither Pansy nor Ginny seemed to mind. Hermione did, particularly when they decided to spend most of it ripping a comb through her hair and casting spells to hold it in hundred of tiny ringlets around her head. She thought she looked a bit like a lion's mane—and not in a good way; Ginny told her it spoke of exotic passion.

And then there was the makeup; caked onto her face so heavily that it was a wonder it hadn't begun to crack.

"Will I be able to peel it off in one piece and save it for later?" Hermione asked, scowling at the mirror.

"Don't worry, you'll sweat most of it off," Pansy replied.

This was hardly comforting.

She had to admit, though, that the dress Ginny had chosen for her wasn't horrible—much shorter than she was comfortable with, but a pleasantly subdued black, and not low-cut enough to make her want to reclaim the cardigan at once. Overall, surprisingly classy.

Of course, the effect was rather ruined by knee-high dragon-hide boots that Ginny had to shrink several sizes before they would fit.

As Ginny and Pansy stepped back to admire their handiwork, Hermione caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror.

"I look like a prostitute."

"A very high-class prostitute," Pansy assured her, earning a slap from Ginny. "I'm sure you'll attract lots of business."

"I can't leave the house in this."

"You can and you will," said Ginny. "Trust me, compared to what everyone else is wearing, you'll look like you borrowed an outfit from somebody's grandmother."

"I see I have no choice in the matter," she said. "Just give me one more minute, and I'll be properly ready."

She slipped out of her bedroom, and faked going in the general direction of the bathroom—instead she slipped into the study.

"Where are you going, all tarted up?" Snape asked, glancing at her as she took wobbly steps towards the nearest bookshelf; she didn't miss the way his eyes lingered on her legs as she leaned over to pull something from the bottom shelf. "Off to fornicate with some drunken sod whilst the undead wait at home for whatever cure you can provide?"

Maybe there was some merit to what Ginny and Pansy had said—if this was her effect on the undead, she could hardly wait to meet the living. Nevertheless, she didn't like the shortness in his tone, which somehow made his words feel more accusatory than usual.

Or maybe that was just self-consciousness.

"To a club," she replied. "And, believe me, it's entirely against my will."

She shrunk the book and tucked it into her purse. In response to his questioning gaze, she added, "If it's really awful, I'll claim a stall in the loo and get some reading done."

Some of the annoyance eased out of his features. "Do you ever stop working? It makes it rather difficult to needle you about typical Gryffindor laziness when you work yourself into the grave."

"When I have such delightful things to distract me from it?"

He was a fine one to talk; if Nagini hadn't killed him, he would have probably died of a heart attack two months later. Of course, if anyone knew the signs he did.

Nevertheless, just to prove that she could annoy with the best of them, she blew him a kiss as she slid out the door—her clothes made playing the flirt almost easy, and she was beginning to learn that he was as easily wound up as she could be.

Ginny and Pansy caught her leaving the study, but only exchanged a glance and didn't insist on searching her purse, which was all the better for them: Hermione would have defended to the death her right to tuck herself away with a book.

It took all of five seconds for Hermione to realise that she would more then blend in among the glittering pulse of bodies crammed into too small a space; with a crushing sense of relief, she knew that Ginny had known she wouldn't mind resembling a slip of a shadow in the crowd. Still, she couldn't resist the compulsion to tug at the hem of the dress in an attempt to bring it down to a more comfortable level.

"You look nice," shouted a mouth pressed against her ear as hands caught her around her waist.

Instinctually, she reached for her wand and twisted with the intent to hex, only to find that it was Harry—lightly soaked in alcohol, and swaying more than a little, but nevertheless familiar. She relaxed back into him, not missing the way that he angled her in Ginny's direction, or the hitch of breath when she flung herself in greeting at someone she knew.

"Our table is over here."

She let him guide her by the hand, keeping close even though she was feeling more than a little claustrophobic, until they reached a booth in the corner with people crammed tightly into it.

Theo waved when he saw her and forced out a row of people so that she could slide in next to him.

"I knew the Weasley tart would come through!"

She let the full force of heavy eye makeup hit him as she narrowed her eyes at him. "And you'll be gloating about it for the next year."

He clapped his hands. "Darling, you look positively demonic. I'm not sure I'll be able to contain myself—you'll have to dance with me."

Something inside of her chest froze. "I agreed to show up," she said. "Dancing was not in the contract."

"It is now."

"You could at least buy me a drink first."

He laughed and handed her a fizzy purple concoction that was sitting in front of him. "Have mine—I've had too much already."

The drink went down far too easily, and had all but disappeared in a matter of seconds. When she set the empty glass back on the coaster, he shooed everyone out of the booth again, and led her into the middle of the dance floor.

It was awkward at first; she had little—no, really—sense of rhythm, and stumbled more than once over the height of her heels, but after the third or fourth drink she felt the first stirrings of dizziness buzz out to her fingers. Her rigidity seeped out of her muscles, leaving behind a pulse that matched the music.

At some point Harry replaced Theo, and then Ron replaced Harry, who was further plied with alcohol and convinced to dance with Theo, and Luna, dressed in silvery feathers and a headdress that reminded Hermione vaguely of a swan, wandered over to join her.

"Daddy said I ought to watch for disco fairies that creep up on girls and make them want to sleep with boys they don't want to. I think he may have been somewhat euphemistic."

Hermione laughed at the lucidity of Luna's words and drank some more, so that by the time she returned to the table her feet ached, the last of her tension had drained away, and she could barely stand. Charlie Weasley, who had appeared sometime in the last hour—two hours, maybe—cleared a space next to him.

"I'm sure you felt traumatised at missing out on the annual Christmas dinner," she tried to yell, but her voice cut out halfway through the sentence.

"Oh, very."

"Where were you?"

He pointed at the man sitting on his other side; Hermione leaned across him and might have felt surprise at the sight of Draco Malfoy, if the alcohol hadn't squeezed any capacity for shock out of her. The Weasleys were on the verge of becoming infamous for their unlikely choices in significant others.

"Christmas party?"

Charlie nodded, and she felt obliged to continue asking questions to keep the conversation lively.

"How did you two meet?"

At this, Draco grinned, predatory, and leaned across Hermione to answer her question directly. "He has a universal interest in dragons."

There were more drinks and more dancing—this time with some of Ginny's team mates—and slowly she began to think of the buzzing in her head and legs as fun, rather than a duty she was performing for the sake of keeping her friends happy.

Pansy found her after another space of time, leaning against the bar and listening to a burly Quidditch player pour his heart out as she nodded sympathetically and finished off yet another unspecified drink.

"Some days I feel like there isn't a point in looking anymore, you know?" he was saying. "You girls are all the same—you fuck with us and then leave us for the man with the biggest, er, paycheque, and then leave him when he retires."

"That's because the man with the biggest, er, paycheque, isn't slumped over his drink, sobbing his heart out," Pansy said, grabbing Hermione by the arm.

"He was nice," Hermione slurred, trying to wrench herself out of Pansy's grasp.

"No, he was pathetic. There's a difference."

Hermione paused to contemplate the wisdom in those words, and nodded her head once. "You're right—I think I need another drink to wash the taste from my mouth."

Pansy raised her eyebrows. "I think another drink is the last thing you need—and I'm not sure those words have ever crossed my lips before now."

"No reason to start now." Ron materialised at Pansy's elbow, levitating three glasses before him. "Gin for you, vodka for me, and water for Hermione."

Hermione scowled in protest. "Hardly fair."

"Are you sleeping with me tonight as payment?"

"Ugh." She pulled a face and smacked him on the arm. "No."

Pansy laughed. "It's comforting to know other women find you attractive—and you've had so much to drink that I doubt we'll get far."

"Thank you for emasculating me in front of my ex-girlfriend."

"It's okay," Hermione said, eyes wide. "I've seen you in much more emus… emis… much worse situations. Remember that time—"

He clapped a hand over her mouth. "I think I know what you're about to say, and the answer is no. You are not allowed to speak the words."

Hermione glared up at him from behind his hand and nodded. As soon as he released her, she turned to Pansy and blurted out, "For his twentieth birthday, he had too much to drink, and we dressed him in a pink tutu."

Ron buried his head in his hands and moaned, as Pansy collapsed against the wall in a fit of giggles.

"Granger, I like you much more when you've been drinking."

"I don't," Ron said. "Traitor."

"Just for that," Pansy told her, "I will buy you another drink. Wait here."

Pansy wound her way to the bar with Ron trailing behind, and Hermione leaned back, grateful for the solidity of the wall. Waves of exhaustion overwhelmed her former giddiness, reminding her that she hadn't slept nearly enough in the last—well, the last year. She wasn't sure how long she stood there, letting the music and voices shift around her at a dizzying rate, but it couldn't have been long; Pansy and Ron were still elbowing their way forward, and the song hadn't changed.

But Luna was heading towards her now, with the same Quidditch player who had cornered Hermione what seemed only moments before.

"Why are you still following me?"

Hermione barely had time to wonder how Luna's voice managed to keep its dreamy texture when she was shouting to be heard over the pounding bass; the Quidditch player set in on yet another tirade about the evils of groupies.

"I don't particularly like Quidditch," Luna said, apparently oblivious to the tears running down his face. "Thousands of triple-horned snorkacks lose their homes to deforestation to make pitches every year, and they're practically extinct."

"You're leaving me for that bastard Richardson, aren't you? With his place as starting sodding seeker and his five-point-three million galleons a year?"

"No, I promised Daddy I'd be home in time to water the Wittering Wildflowers."

"You needn't lie to spare my feelings. I'll find out in the morning anyway."

Luna shot a desperate glance over her shoulder, and began edging towards Hermione's wall. When the Quidditch player lunged for her and grabbed her by the arm, Hermione decided that, amusing as it was to watch his frustration, it was time for something to be done.

Stepping forward, she said, "She's really not interested." It came out fuzzier than intended, and too quiet to be heard above everything else.

"Sorry, come again?"

"I really don't think she's interested."

His eyes narrowed, and he stepped closer. Hermione was mildly alarmed to find that he hovered around her escape route with bulging muscles, and that her reaction time was non-existent. Her only hope was that the alcohol in her breath would be exposed to an open flame and she would be able to burn him to a crisp with a single puff of air.

"Back already? Found out exactly how long Richardson can last?"

"I don't know who Richardson is," she said, his face inches from hers. "I don't really care to."

"What do I have to do to make you women understand—"

A drink appeared over her left shoulder, grasped by a stiff hand; the same hand that had spent an hour attempting to tame the wild beast of her hair.

"You could start by not invading their personal space," Pansy said as she stepped around Hermione and took hold of him by the bicep, making no effort to conceal the way that her nails dug into the skin. Hermione was amused to see that she towered over him, and would have even without the stilettos. "Then, once you've backed away, you can wait for my overprotective Auror fiancé to walk over and answer for the consequences."

He relaxed slightly at the realisation that the pain was in the immediate future rather than the present. Hermione took a sip from her drink and watched closely, knowing that this sort of intimidation tactic might come in useful someday—even if the only suspects shorter than her were first years and dwarves.

"That's not to say that I wouldn't highly enjoy taking advantage of five years working as a Gringott's curse breaker, but it's so much less messy when it's the fist of the law smashing your face in."

On cue, Ron stepped in between Hermione and the Quidditch player, with a pleasant smile on his face. "Do you think I'll need to make use of the handcuffs?"

Pansy pouted. "But you promised we could use them later."

Hermione supposed she would never know if it was finishing off that final drink or the mental image that Pansy's remark produced that sent her over the edge, but her stomach lurched unpleasantly and before she could blink Pansy had dropped her prisoner and was pushing open a door that led to the alley behind the club.

She spent what felt like an hour kneeling down with her head pressed against the brick before she could pause to breathe again.

"Sorry," she said, trying to spit the taste from her mouth.

"I told you that you'd had enough." Only Pansy would try to sound saintly when drunk and wearing next to no clothing in a deserted alleyway.

"Sorry," she said again, miserably.

"In about ten minutes, once I've realised that I'll be able to remember this moment for the rest of my life, whenever I have my head in the toilet, I won't mind a bit."

Hermione stood up, trying to hide the trembling of her knees and failing. "Thanks."

Ron chose that moment to appear through the same door, bearing a glass of water and a napkin. Hermione accepted them, and forced herself to take slow, careful sips, patting dry the beads of sweat on her neck and forehead in between them.

"I've had less to drink than you have," Ron said. "I'll take her home."

Ron Apparated back to Grimmauld place with her and helped her up the stairs and into a set of flannel pyjamas, with Hermione apologising every step of the way. He left her feeling a second wave of nausea, which she managed to hold back until she heard the door shut behind him downstairs; just because she saw herself experiencing a less than pleasant night didn't mean she had to ruin his.

When she had finished emptying the contents of her stomach for the second time, she brushed her teeth until her tongue had gone numb from the mint and wiped the remaining makeup from around her eyes.

"Did you enjoy your evening?" Snape asked, making her jump and send the washcloth flying into the bathtub.

"Do you always creep up behind people like that?"

"I heard you, and thought you might like someone to check in and make sure you were still alive."

She turned and found him leaning against the doorframe, looking amused.

"Until about half an hour ago, it was lovely, thank you."

"I have no doubt of that. Can I fetch you anything? A glass of water, perhaps?"

Certain that he could turn even the most innocent, unremarkable glass of water into an insult, she scowled and brushed past him. "I'm just about to make a pot of tea, actually. You can join me if you'd like."

She heard his footsteps behind her and took that as a 'yes'.

It came as a surprise when he took the teapot and leaves from her fumbling hands and poured the boiling water for her, but not as much as it might have if she had been fully lucid. In the back of her mind, she was reminded of waking to find her head on a small stack of pillows rather than the keyboard of her laptop, and of his eagerness—even if it was disguised in insults—to run through a new theory with her.

Her eyebrows knit together in a frown when he passed her a mug, and settled across from her with one of his own.

"I didn't realise you could eat—or drink."

"I just like the smell," he said. "I'm rather hesitant to apply water to a decomposing corpse."

She smiled and curled around her cup of tea. "I can see where that might come from."

They settled into an easy silence—the sort of silence that made most people chatter to fill it up—and when it seemed natural to break it, when his gaze dropped down to examine the grain of the wood table and he sighed, looking more at ease than she had ever seen him, she spoke.

"You're arguably an observer of the human condition—quite a good one. What would make a person want to raise someone from the dead?"

He pushed the hair from his eyes and glanced up. "You're recovering from your state of inebriation quite quickly, aren't you?"

"No—if I were completely sober I wouldn't be hounding after motive, I'd be methodically examining the clues. It's only because I have had a few too many that I'm forcing myself to admit that there are no clues."

"Any number of reasons—insanity, the desire for power over the living and the dead, grief…" He broke off with a shrug. "There are as many reasons as there are people. I'd like to think I know better than to try, but I suspect my reasons would be entirely selfish. You would raise the dead to try and give the universe justice and order. Potter would do it for some combination of the two."

She shivered at the realisation that he had caught her glancing through the necromancy texts. "Lucius Malfoy had the means," she said, "but I'm not convinced there was a motive—and I suspect he's the sort of man who needs a motive and an evil plan for the day to get out of bed in the morning. If it were an army of Inferi it would be different, but you still have your personality, your—your—"

"My soul?"

Her nose wrinkled. "I hate the word. It feels so… not technical."

"But it is the technical—and, I might add, generally undisputed—term in necromancy. Many would argue that only a Muggle would make such a fuss over a single word."

"But words are all we have—especially in magic. Spells are really nothing more than words attached to an arbitrary movement. It's the words that give us control, and keep us from accidentally ending the world—there must be consequences for using the wrong one."

"But who decides on the words, if not the people using them?"

His words seemed to cut through the fog surrounding her mind, and she straightened as ideas flooded her mind. Together, they began to hammer out the beginnings of a theory: how to attach arbitrary, unrelated words to spells to confuse an opponent; whether or not etymology mattered; if intent was more important than the spell itself.

Hermione felt as though she were hovering on the verge of some sort of revelation that was pushing in on her thoughts and would come clattering into her conscious any second, but it was interrupted by Ron, Harry, and Theo exploding into the room in a flurry of shouting.

Hermione's mug clattered to the floor and Snape stood, looking as though he were debating between bolting and trying to break up what looked like a scuffle. The most rational explanation that entered into Hermione's mind was that Ron had caught Theo taking advantage of Harry's inebriated state and wasn't reacting well—except that it seemed less an argument that had turned to muscle than a race which none of them was winning.

Harry finally broke free and collapsed before her knees, gasping for breath. "There was another attempted murder—Silbury Hill this time—only they caught the man before he could do it and he's being held by the Aurors. We thought you might be interested in the questioning."

The last of the alcohol seemed to clear from her system, chased out by a sudden, burning fury that made her head pound alongside her pulse; it was mingled with relief that it was over, even if she hadn't solved it herself.

"Let's go," she said, rising to her feet.

Finally, she could go back to ordinary sleeping hours, some of the panic created by the murders would subside, and the undead could go back to an un-prefixed existence in which they were simply dead.

She flashed a glance at Snape, and felt something sink inside of her. Remembering something that someone—perhaps the Diggorys—had told her earlier that day, she crossed the room to where Snape was standing, frozen, and wrapped both of her hands around his. Black danced at the edges of her vision, but it was less powerful than it had been last time, and subsided before it completely took over.

He tried to wrench his hand out of her grip, but she clung on until the tension stretching between them subsided; his eyes widened as they met hers.

"It'll be easier if I give you a little bit every day," she told him. "As far as I can tell, the only lasting effect was to increase my metabolism, which I don't particularly mind."


	7. Chapter 7: Exegesis

Chapter 7

Exegesis

Between hunting down Harry and Ron for lunch, and being assigned as head of various cases, Hermione knew the Auror department nearly as well as she knew Mysteries. Nevertheless, hurrying down corridors lit only by torches at an hour when any reasonable person would be in bed was disorienting; Hermione was deeply grateful for the foul concoction that Ron had handed over, intended to sober her up.

It had worked so well that she felt the beginnings of a hangover knocking politely on the inside of her skull.

"Did what's-his-name tell you anything?" Hermione asked Harry, keeping close on his heels and pulling her bathrobe around her waist more tightly.

"Roderick? Not really; he seemed just as surprised as we were."

"What about the intended victim?"

"Just that she's alive and being held for questioning."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Didn't you think to ask any questions?"

"We were taken by surprise, and thought we ought to fetch you before anything else—you're the one who has been losing the most sleep over it."

"I suppose we'll find out soon enough, at any rate," she said. "Thanks, Harry."

"Yeah, thanks," Theo echoed, his voice breathy as he struggled to keep up.

The four of them burst into Auror headquarters in a flurry of movement, none of them wearing anything that might be passed off as appropriate work attire. A man—little more than a boy, really—was sitting by an old-fashioned rotating telephone, answering and forwarding calls in between sips of coffee from an automatically refilling cup, and a young woman whom Hermione felt she ought to recognise by her flashing blue eyes, if nothing else, sat in the waiting area shooting glares at her two guards.

Hermione's eyes slid to the back of the room, where another two heavily armed Aurors guarded a door, a tall, rail-thin man with wispy hair and a stocky blonde. One of them—the man—hurried forward, intercepting Theo and Hermione before they could advance.

"We've managed to ascertain that the man we're holding is a squib who goes by the name of Aeschylus Warwick, and the young woman he intended to kill is the werewolf known as Cecelia Grayback."

Theo whistled under his breath. "Fenrir's daughter?"

"The very same. She claims that Warwick _can_ perform magic, but she must be lying. I just don't see how it's possible."

Hermione and Theo exchanged a glance; it was enough reassure her they were on the same page.

"Thanks, Roderick," said Theo. "I think we've got it from here."

They approached Cecelia first, shoulder-to-shoulder, wands away, as though she were a small animal they didn't want to spook.

She bared her teeth as they approached and shook off the warning hand one of the Aurors placed on her shoulder. "You've no right to keep me here."

"We only need to ask you a few questions—" Theo began in his most patient voice.

"But I haven't done anything wrong!"

"—and you'll be free to go."

Her voice was choked with rage and tears, and Hermione was able to look past the sneer on her face to see a girl who was maybe fourteen or fifteen years old, with a thin line of dried blood stretching along the base of her neck.

For a moment, she could feel the cool steel thread of a blade digging into her throat, but she shook it off and forced herself to look away from the eyes that were eerily similar to Fenrir Grayback's to look at the guards.

"If you'd like a coffee break, now would be a good time," she said. "We would like a moment alone with Miss Grayback."

"She's tried to escape twice, now," said the one on the left, but they obeyed. Hermione didn't miss the way their shoulders relaxed once they had exited her biting radius.

"Now," she said, pulling up a chair so that she was sitting directly across from her and leaning forward, "we've been looking for the man who tried to, er—who kidnapped you for quite some time, so any information about him and his methods would be helpful."

The girl shrugged. "My pack stays mostly in the Forbidden Forest—no one goes into it, so we're mostly safe, and we only hunt humans when we've changed so all the things that live there are safe. About a year ago, someone started leaving out silver traps—"

"They're illegal," Hermione said, feeling anger start to well up in the pit of her stomach; she waited until it had coiled back into the depths before continuing. "I passed a law four years ago, banning them."

Cecelia raised her eyebrows, and rolled up the right leg of her trousers to show a blood-soaked bandage. "Well, it didn't work very well, then, did it? Anyway, someone has been laying out silver traps intended to hurt us and taking away the victims—according to the _Daily Prophet_, they're always the ones who end up dead within a few days."

"You ought to have reported the traps," Hermione said, and Theo placed a hand on her arm. She bit back the tirade about werewolf-human relations, settling back in her seat. "Sorry, continue."

"I walked right into one and he had me. That was three days ago, but I was out for most of it—the silver was in my blood, and I didn't wake up until a few hours ago, stuffed in the boot of a car."

"That answers that question, then," Theo said. "Roderick said you told him Warwick is capable of magic? How is that possible, when he's registered as a squib."

Cecelia shrugged. "He used a body-bind curse and a levitation spell on me—and told me that I was lovely and strong and absolutely perfect."

"Leeching spells," said Hermione, closing her eyes. "It's all ritual, and based on arithmancy and location; you don't need magic for them to work, just someone's life-force to take away."

"But he couldn't have—"

"No, not Stonehenge." A wave of horror slammed into her, leaving her seasick. "That working was much too powerful, especially because the Stonehenge murderer used a Muggle."

"Two killers, then," Theo said. "We didn't even consider…"

"Hello, square one." Hermione's lips tightened into a half-smile as she looked at Cecelia. "I don't think we'll need you any longer. Is there anyone we can contact?"

She shook her head. "An owl would take too long, and we don't use the Floo network—it would be much faster to go on my own."

It struck Hermione that the girl had probably rarely left the Forbidden Forest before now, and that the distance between London and northern Scotland was further than she had ever travelled in her life. Her eyes wandered around the room, searching for someone trustworthy; Ron glanced up as her gaze rested on him, and he winked.

"If I ask someone to accompany you, will that be all right? You can go side-along, and it will be much faster."

"I'd much rather—"

Hermione gestured Ron over, and he hurried over. "My mistress calls. What beneficial and generally useful service may I provide for you this evening?"

Hermione grinned up at him, and Cecelia narrowed her eyes. "I'd like you to accompany this young lady back to her home in the Forbidden Forest. Do you think you can comply, or shall I be forced into asking one of these other strapping young lads?"

"Of course I can. Will you be requiring my keen sense of smell, or just my charming personality, to keep her entertained on the journey?"

A smile tugged at the corners of the girl's lips, but she quickly turned them downward. "I'll be quite all right on my own."

Ron shot her his best puppy eyes. "You wouldn't want to hurt my feelings, would you?"

Hermione exchanged a look with Theo, and both of them stood.

"Thank you, Miss Grayback, for your help," she said, holding out a hand to shake. "I don't think I introduced myself, but I'm Hermione Granger and this is my partner, Theodore Nott—if you ever need to contact us about anything, your owl should be able to find us."

Cecelia took the offered hand, her eyes widening until she looked more childlike than defensive. "Like, the war hero? Who passed the werewolf legislation? You're wearing pyjamas."

"One of the glories of being an Unspeakable is that you never get a full night of sleep. And now," she said, her eyes narrowing, "if you will excuse me, I have a serial killer to murder."

"I get to help, right?" Theo asked, all but bouncing in place. "Please can I be good cop? I'm always bad cop and it's losing its charm."

"You're welcome to it—I feel a hangover coming on, and being friendly isn't high on my list of priorities."

As they left Cecelia in the capable hands of Ronald Weasley, Theo nudged her and muttered, "If you would just introduce yourself at the beginning of an interview, people would automatically give you all the information they have, either out of fear or awe."

"But that would be cheating."

They broke off their conversation as the guards parted; one of them fumbled for the key and twisted the lock, and Hermione patted her bathrobe pocket for her wand. The door opened to reveal a handcuffed man with sandy hair hunched over the table—at the sight of him, something snapped, and Hermione found that it would be entirely too easy to lose control.

She sucked in a breath of air and strode across the room, slamming her fist in front of the table as she had seen Theo do dozens of times before.

"Just where do you get off," she hissed, "murdering girls for their magic?"

His head rose slowly, revealing too-pale eyes buried inside a ruddy complexion. "That wasn't a girl—that was a monster."

His words were all the confession she needed; every trace of acting left her, and, for the first time in her career, she had to genuinely fight off the urge to kill.

No one tried to stop her when she stormed out of the holding cell; every Auror in the room, including Harry, froze, and she was glad of it. She needed to hide until some of the fury had burned away and she wouldn't feel tempted to hex anyone who looked at her the wrong way.

She reached the safe Apparition point, and nearly splinched herself trying to decide between her parents and home; at the first sign of the stretched-out sensation, she settled on Grimmauld Place, and felt some of her irritation subside as all of her body parts followed her.

Nevertheless, she took great pleasure in slamming the door behind her and pounding up the stairs, making sure to throw even more weight into it as she passed the study; it was the most misery she would be able to spread for the night, even if it did mean that she was behaving like a child throwing a tantrum.

When she reached her bedroom, she touched her face, found tears, and hexed her chair until it splintered, then collapsed against the wall and sobbed into her arms.

"You do realise that you just demolished a perfectly functional and entirely innocent chair?"

"Get out of my—" She glanced up to see him standing a respectful distance outside her door, and some of the anger faded. "Oh."

"Do you mind if I come in?"

She shrugged and wiped her eyes on her sleeves. "If you want."

He did without hesitation, and lowered himself onto the floor next to her. "You're acting like a homesick first year."

"I'm acting like someone who just questioned a man who called an adolescent werewolf girl a monster, and would have used it as an excuse to kill her so he could leech her magic with a clean conscience. Like he'd done a dozen times before. Like he was doing the world a favour."

He didn't respond, just waited until she was ready to continue.

"And he'll be convicted and handed over to the Dementors and everyone will sigh with relief and go home, and what will it fix? Someday someone else will decide that the werewolves and the merfolk and the centaurs—or some other half-breed—are less than them and they'll do the same thing, and everyone will be glad that it isn't proper people, and all I can do to change it is to pass laws that don't work banning the use of silver traps and iron fishing spears.

"Every minute it's like I'm back in Mal—back in Malfoy Manor, being tortured, and I'm completely helpless and I know that no fight I put up with make any sort of difference, but giving up is even worse."

Tears began to well up again, and she blinked them away, leaning towards him until her head found his shoulder, as though it were the perfectly natural thing to do. Through his sweater, she couldn't tell that his skin was only room temperature and he didn't have a pulse; it was almost normal.

"Every time something awful happens I have to prod at it until it hurts, because I'm afraid of not caring, because that's somehow worse." She sniffled. "Sorry, it's just that Harry and Ron think I'm eternally capable, and Theo is incredibly useful but he can't seem to visit a crime scene without being ill."

So slowly that it barely registered, his hand slid around her back—careful to avoid her skin—and came to rest on her ribcage. She shuffled closer, so that she could rest her head in the hollow of his chest and closed her eyes, trying not to note the failure of his shoulders to rise and fall. It wasn't his fault, she told herself; it wouldn't be fair to be repulsed by him, not after everything.

"In my experience," he said, after a moment, "you can't be affected by everything equally. There is a line between finding the things that are wrong with the world and trying to find ways to fix them, and turning everything into a personal failure. It can't always be about your grief—that's an insult to the grieving."

She raised her head so that she could see him, and found that he was staring past her, out into the hall. When she looked past his eyes and saw the painful lines carved into his face, it occurred to her that he was trying to convince himself.

His brought his gaze back to rest on hers, and seemed to shrink back, somehow reigning himself back into his physical shell at her expression without so much as twitching. His mouth twisted, and pain shifted to bitterness. "But I suppose that grief is a luxury the living can afford."

She didn't recall crawling into bed, but it was where she woke up the next morning. She tried to roll onto her side to check the time, but it caused the thrumming in her head to begin to pound with the vigour of an ancient tribal drum—it beat a feeble moan from her chest, forcing her to pull the blankets back over her head and bury her face in her pillows.

The sobering potion she had taken the night before had bought her a couple of painless hours, but it seemed that those were over, and the cool relief that spread from the darkness of the pillow's underside was even briefer, ended by a number of sharp barks echoing in her ears.

She threw a pillow in Ron's general direction and, without looking up to see whether it hit the mark, returned to shutting out the world. Ron the Irish Setter misunderstood her intentions, and brought the pillow back to her, using a cold nose on the back of her neck to signal that he was ready to continue.

"If you want to play, you're going to have to find me something for my hangover," she mumbled, poking her head out.

Ron sat on his wagging tail and whined.

"And stop looking at me like that. It won't work."

It did, though, and within minutes she was pushing back the covers and finger-combing her hair into a semblance of order.

"Haven't you got a girlfriend you can irritate? Or does she know better than to put up with you when you're like this?"

He barely finished waiting for her to pull a t-shirt over her head, before snatching the hem of it between his teeth and pulling her towards the hallway. With a sigh, she followed him, trying to step lightly; every time she set her foot down, an arrow of pain shot through her skull.

"If Timmy fell down the well again, it will be much easier to save him if you just change back and _tell_ me."

He let go of her in front of the study, and growled at the door. A ripple of laughter slipped out through the cracks around the door.

Hermione turned the handle, deciding that there had better be a mass murder taking place inside if Ron was ever going to earn her forgiveness; instead, she found Pansy sitting on the floor in front of Snape, telling some sort of story, which, judging by the wild and slightly rude hand gestures, probably had something to do with Theo. It took a moment for it to register that Snape's head was buried in his hands because he was laughing.

"I think your animal wants attention," Hermione said, mentally rifling through the medicine cabinet for something to cure her hangover.

"He can wait—I'm telling Professor Snape the less savoury exploits of his ex-students."

"It's such a relief to know that they've turned out so well," he added, wryly.

"Make sure you tell him about the time Theo stole a boat and serenaded the Giant Squid in the middle of a rainstorm."

"Ah, yes," she heard Pansy say as the door clicked shut. "There were tentacles _everywhere_."

Ron whined and scratched at the door, and Hermione glared down at him. "I'm not letting you in there to shed all over my books. Now, behave, or I'll tie you up outside for the rest of the day."

He slunk away, leaving her alone to hunt for something to relieve her headache.

It was a matter of seconds to discover that they had nothing with the rest of the (mostly expired) medicinal potions, and another five minutes to search Harry's room to find that the didn't have anything stashed away somewhere. She was too afraid of what she might find in Ron's room to look; instead she stumbled down the stairs, clutching the banister as though it were her last line to sanity and a pain-free existence, with the vague hope of finding something caffeinated.

Someone—the new love of her life—had left a half-empty pot of coffee on the counter. She stumbled towards it, and began fumbling through the cupboards for a mug, but they were all in the sink. With a shrug, she lifted the pot to her lips, not particularly minding the lukewarm temperature: it only made it easier to gulp it down.

"Hermione?"

She jerked to attention at the sound of Theo's voice, sloshing the last of the coffee down her front. It was, she thought, probably a symptom of some deep-seated psychological problem if her first reaction was to berate him for making her waste it.

"Don't drink that—it's been sitting out since we got back from the Auror department—you don't even _like_ coffee!"

"These are extenuating circumstances," she said, feeling better already. "I told you that making me go out last night was a bad idea."

He laughed. "But it was fun while it lasted, wasn't it?"

"So not worth the pain." She turned to face him, feeling her eyebrows shoot up at his wardrobe choice. "Aren't those Harry's boxers?"

His face broke into a smile reminiscent of a beam of sunshine: so bright it was painful to look at directly. "Yes."

"You do realise that this makes you his drunken rebound shag?"

Defying all physical and biological laws, the smile grew wider. "Which is almost the same thing as stealing him from the Weasley tart? Yes and yes."

Hermione shook her head. "And this is a good idea, because…"

"He'll constantly compare me to his ex, and I'll always come out on top?" Theo said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"I didn't realise he… well, you know."

"Liked men? You mean, you didn't hear the rumour circling round the Ministry a couple years ago?"

"About him and Blaise Zabini?"

"No, Terry Boot—but, wait. There was one about Zabini, too?"

She rolled her eyes. "It doesn't matter; neither of them were true."

"I wouldn't be so sure. Zabini went through a phase…"

Hermione didn't want to know. She tried to communicate this clearly by crinkling up her face into a ball of disgust, and Theo seemed to take the hint.

"Anyway, my point is that he was far too good for it to be a first."

"Theo! Please stop—I'm really happier without—I've known him since he was eleven!"

Harry chose the moment of her disgust to burst in bearing plastic bags filled with food. "I've brought lunch," he said, apparently oblivious to the fact that Hermione was in the throes of irritation.

Her irritation only increased at the realisation that she had slept in far longer than she had intended.

"Do you want any?" he asked her. "I've got soup, things to make sandwiches with, er…"

As he rooted through his purchases, trying to find other uses for them, Hermione leaned over and plucked something out of one of the bags.

"Kibbles? Remind me why we're encouraging him?"

Harry looked sheepish. "I always wanted a dog."

"So buy a shiatsu, or some other dog too small to turn the handle and get into my room."

Feeling cross for reasons other than her gradually fading headache, she stormed out of the room and up the stairs. She passed Pansy and Ron—still in dog form—halfway up, and felt a stab of relief that she could retreat to her study without having to put up with inane chatter and high-pitched giggles.

It was lucky for Snape that he knew how to keep quiet, or she would have tossed him out into the general house to fend for himself days ago.

But when she flung the door open and found him staring out of the window, forehead against the glass, elbows propped up on the windowsill, some of her annoyance vanished, and she wanted nothing more than to quietly retreat and leave him to his thoughts.

It was too late; he turned when he heard her enter and held her pinned with his gaze—at first with the full force his sorrow, and, then, as it it closed over, with her desire to see back in.

"You've had an owl," he said, after a moment. "You were still asleep when it came, so I just left the letter on your desk."

In that moment, she couldn't have cared less about it, even if it could lead her to the Stonehenge killer—which was highly doubtful. Something was sweeping over her, a cross between epiphany and abject terror, and she let it, unable to move until it finished rushing past her, leaving a trembling ache in her stomach.

Fortunately, his eyes had focussed on something just past her left ear, and he didn't seem to have noticed. She pulled her hair off her shoulders and let it fall down her back, suddenly self-conscious, and shook herself into motion.

"I just wanted to check something," she said, walking behind the desk and pulling up the laptop. It created a physical barrier that she reinforced by feigning keystrokes until she could think of something to look up.

A few minutes reassured her that the Muggle press hadn't caught wind of last night's almost murder, and another half-second told her that they were still reporting on Stonehenge. Most recent was a chronology of Jennifer Bartleby's career, beginning with her early childhood and running until the night of December twenty-first, which shoved a wrench into her theory that the woman might be living in self-imposed exile from the Wizarding world; at least the facts would be easy enough to check.

A Bath newspaper had published an article on ritual sacrifice and druidism, which looked as though it had been written using the first three results the most convenient search engine provided, tabloids looked to be making up stories about a royal conspiracy, and Hermione became increasingly convinced that lazy researchers deserved to be condemned to a special hell.

She signed and rested her chin on the top of her laptop screen, feeling pathetic.

"I'm out of ideas—I hope you don't mind being undead, because unless we can find who did this and which spell they used, you may be stuck here for a very long time."

Something crossed his features, and she couldn't tell if it was dread or longing.

"Everyone claims that they were asleep in bed at the time of the murder—which is only sensible, and, incidentally, practically impossible to check up on—and the only connections that can be drawn are circumstantial. I don't think that a group of people who like to dress up in robes a few times a year and spend a lot of time romanticising nature killed a man who had absolutely nothing to do with them, I really don't see why Lucius Malfoy would want to draw attention to himself for something that doesn't seem to have had a purpose, and the serial killer didn't do it—which only makes sense, because it didn't fit, which we ought to have seen before.

"Right now, I want nothing more than to receive a signed confession and suicide note from the murderer via owl, and find from the _Daily Prophet _that they've flung themselves from the nearest rocky cliff with crashing waves below it."

A grin twitched at the corner of his lips, and her scowl deepened. "You're discussing motives again."

"Yes," she said, closing her laptop with a violent click, "but only because there are no clues."

"There must be some."

"Some very well hidden ones." She unlocked the desk drawer and shuffled through the mass of folders before finding what she was looking for. "I've made copies of all of the photographs from the crime scene, if you'd like to look."

He nodded, and joined her behind the desk as she spread them out in front of her, pointing to them as she spoke.

"We haven't received the translation of the runes yet—but they aren't like anything I've ever encountered before, and the same applies to the rest of the department. This photograph shows them most clearly."

"That's rather gruesome, isn't it? I can see why you're not as repulsed by me as you ought to be."

She let out a bark of laughter. "It was much worse in person. Anyway, there's no use hunting for footprints, because, as you can see, there are none, possibly because the rain washed them away, and possibly because our culprit was careful to erase them."

"What about these?"

"Theo's, the clumsy git. They aren't there in the other photographs." She shifted to a close-up of the victim's face. "The slice on the neck is very fine and clean, with no magical residue according to the autopsy, suggesting that an ordinary razor was used. The bruising around the neck tells us that he was strangled first, and there was damage to the skull, suggesting that he was also hit over the head with a blunt weapon, probably round-ish and about eight inches in diameter."

"Like a beater bat?" Snape asked.

"Yes," she said, slowly. "Exactly like."

"Of course, there are probably as many beater bats in existence across Wizarding Britain as there are razors," he pointed out. "So not terribly helpful."

"But not something I would have thought of."

"These markings," Snape said, tracing the outline of the body in the first photograph. "The reason you didn't recognise them is because they aren't runes at all—I think they might be Ogham."

"Celtic writing? It certainly fits with the location…"

"And the Neo-druids," he pointed out.

"It does rather nudge us in that direction, doesn't it?" She cleared aside the photographs, leaving the one in which the markings were visible on top, and opened her laptop again, running a search on 'Ogham'. It was a moment's work to enlarge the photograph until she could see the symbols without having to squint.

Snape shifted so that he was directly behind her and tugged the picture from her hands, holding it directly above the chart she had found. A shiver ran through her that had nothing to do with the excitement of a breakthrough, but she pushed it away, and scrolled down the page until she found two symbols identical to the ones on the body.

"And Ogham it is," she said, grinning up at him. "Birch and…" She paused to read the translation of the other. "Birch and Alder—Elder? No, that's something different."

"Elder's in the photograph, too. Look closely, by his waist."

"So it is—alternating with Willow." She paused to scribble the symbols on a scrap of paper, alongside their accompanying meaning. "According to the chart, Birch is 'new beginnings', Alder is 'communication with spirits'—those two are fairly self explanatory—Willow is 'equilibrium'—"

"The murder," he said. "A life for a life—the killer knew, at least, to keep the balance."

"And Elder—'timelessness'. Eternal life?"

"The other meaning is 'the end'—this is a very poor translation, you know."

"I can double-check it on another site," she replied, "but unless you have an involved scholarly knowledge of Ogham that you can recite off-hand, it's the best we've got."

She ran another search and scribbled down alternate meanings where she could find them, and Snape continued to study the photograph.

"What's this one, in the centre of his chest?"

"Elder, isn't it?" she said, squinting.

"The lines are at a different angle, though—I think it might be yew."

"Which, incidentally, means resurrection, according to this chart. Makes perfect sense, I suppose—and isn't it typically the wand of Dark Lords?"

"You mean, when they aren't running round killing people for the Elder Wand?" There was more than a touch of bitterness in his voice; she thought it more than justified. "To the best of my knowledge, yes."

She tried to hold back the inevitable leap of logic, and failed. "I suppose it's possible that yew takes on a double meaning, then? Resurrection of the Dark Lord of your choice?"

"It appears to have failed; the nearest they got was me."

"Unless someone else was raised, alongside the five of you? We can't ignore the possibility that there are pseudo-zombies running around that we don't know about."

"I find myself rather hoping that the Dark Lord is decomposing on the forest floor somewhere."

She grinned up at him. "I can't blame you. Which reminds me…"

Pushing back her chair, she stood to face him. "Give me your hand."

The amusement dropped from his face, replaced by something illegible. "I'd really rather you—"

"Nonsense. Do you want to be trapped in a festering heap of flesh? I think not."

He crossed his hands under his arms and scowled.

"It takes much less out of me this way. Unless you'd rather wait until you're falling to bits and it takes three people to revive you? If I don't do it, Pansy will, and, in case you haven't noticed, you've shifted into the realm of hero in Harry's book—do you want to owe him that?"

She didn't miss his slight wince. "And owing you is preferable?"

"At least you'll know I'm doing it for sensible reasons, rather than simply because I worship the ground you walk on."

"For all your claims to sense, I don't think you have a practical bone in your body," he muttered, but held out his hand.

This time, it was easier—or perhaps she was just getting used to it. The tug was fainter, still pulling at her navel, but she didn't feel as though she had been squeezed through the wringer so much as lightly rinsed; when she glanced up at Snape, it seemed that his hair had more of a sheen than she recalled, his complexion a touch more colour.

She forced her gaze away, onto the desk, before the knot in her stomach could transform into a crushing weight. Trying to ignore the fact that this did nothing to stop the onslaught, she tidied away the photographs and closed her laptop.

"Besides," she said lightly, "I owe _you_. You've managed to do more on this case in half an hour than Theo and I combined."

Her eyes fell on the letter that Snape had left on the desk for her. To still her fidgeting, she tore open the envelope and pulled out a scrap of parchment with scrambling fingers that pulled and folded the edges; it contained a single line that left her momentarily bewildered.

This revelation was less heated and panicked, more like a cool slipping together of details she had observed without being conscious of them, things that she ought to have been aware of before now.

"Theo," she shouted, running for the stairs. "Theo, I've got it!"


	8. Chapter 8: A Less Than Cunning Plan

Harry and Theo had left the soup on the burner, which was now burnt to the saucepan, breadcrumbs on the counter, and no note. With a sigh of irritation, she flicked off the stove and filled the pot with water; Harry could wash it properly when he came home.

They were nowhere to be seen on the ground floor; she raced back up the stairs and down the hall to Harry's room, pushing open the door and shielding her eyes, a measure which proved unnecessary. The covers were twisted around themselves, clearly displaying the empty hollow of a bed.

Rather than waste time trying to find them when it was clear the house was empty, she snatched the box of Floo powder from its shelf in the cupboard and barrelled into the living room.

"Auror headquarters," she said, sprinkling the green dust onto the fire and kneeling before it.

The familiar office materialised before her eyes, although it was emptier than usual. Only one man sat behind the reception desk—a trainee she had been introduced to only a couple of weeks before—shuffling a deck of cards and taking the occasional sip from a mug that she was willing to bet contained something much stronger than butterbeer.

She cleared her throat in an attempt to catch his attention and, when that failed, tried again.

"Excuse me," she said, with more than a slight bite in her voice, and felt a stab of satisfaction when he jumped and nearly fell off of his chair. "A little help, if you don't mind?"

"Sorry—I didn't hear you arrive."

"Obviously." She tried to channel her inner Snape; judging by the way he all but stood at attention, her attempt was succeeding. "I need you to get me a small team of Aurors—I think I've made a break in the Stonehenge case and need back-up."

"I thought the case was solved last night."

She resisted the urge to pop through the fire the rest of the way and strangle him. "No, that was the serial killer. This is different."

"Assembling a team when almost all of them are on holiday?" The expression on his face told her that this conversation was going to be a fruitless endeavour. "You must be from one of the bureaucratic departments—everyone says you lot are useless."

"I have evidence that there are people being imprisoned—"

"What kind of evidence?"

"Just a letter, but that isn't the point—the point is that you should be on your way at the slightest hint of something illegal. Your job is to stop people from getting hurt."

"And how am I supposed to tell whether or not the letter is a fake?"

For a moment, the only sound that broke the silence was the crackling of the fire, until Hermione decided that the question wasn't worth a response. It was probably a miracle that Reginald Barker could remember to breathe.

"I'm sorry," she said, plastering a sweet smile on her face and hoping that the effect wasn't lost in the green flames. "I didn't catch your name."

"Reginald," he said. "Reginald Barker."

"Reginald, you've been an Auror for, what? Two weeks?"

"Three," he said stiffly.

"After that stunning lack of judgment, I doubt you'll make it to four. Do you have any idea to whom you are speaking?"

He shook his head, traces of alarm showing in the whites of his eyes.

"In that case, I'm not going to tell you. It'll be so much more amusing when you read it on your release form—but if you don't want to be totally useless, would you mind owling Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley to tell them that they're needed at home for an emergency? And while your at it, I want you to dig out the _Daily Prophet _from earlier this week and study the photographs of the corpse at Stonehenge, and then very seriously consider whether you want to be responsible for another death like that."

Instead of waiting to hear his reply, she closed the connection and returned to the study and began rummaging through her bag. She came out with the mobile that her parents had given her for Christmas the year before last, and which she had promptly forgotten about.

Her laptop still had the instant messaging program she had installed in her initial fit of excitement and, rather like her mobile, had barely used; she opened it and logged in, glad that she had always used the same password for everything. It was the work of minutes to find instructions and set up her mobile to send text messages to someone online, and create a second account.

"I'm about to do something exceptionally stupid," she told Snape, beckoning him over, "and I need you to help me."

She rotated the screen so that he could see it from where he was standing, and he leaned forward.

"I think Amos Diggory is the murderer—the note was from Cedric, telling me that he found some incriminating documents in the house and thinks his father is holding people in his shed. I'm going to poke around to see if I can find anything conclusive. I haven't the faintest idea where Theo is, otherwise I would drag him along, and if there are people I don't want to wait for the genius behind the Auror reception desk to decide it's a good idea to pass the message on.

"This is a programme that will allow us to send messages back and forth immediately—I need you to sit here and watch it as long as I'm gone, and tell whomever comes home first where I've gone."

As she spoke, thunderous clouds built up in his eyes, sparking with unspoken fury. When she paused, he cut in, voice crackling.

"I've learned to expect nothing less than exceptional idiocy from Gryffindors, but this by far outweighs them all. You can't expect me to help you go to the house of a potential murderer alone—"

"I won't be alone, though. Not if you do your part."

"Can't you Floo for backup?"

"I just tried the Aurors—sodding useless group of people—and Mysteries is on holiday at the moment, which means I'd have to sell this house to get enough money to bribe them to do anything resembling work."

She shifted to match his pose—crossed arms, narrowed eyes—and stared him down until he let his hands fall and gesture helplessly towards her laptop.

"If you insist."

She bared her teeth in a feral grin. "Oh, I do."

—

Outside of the city, the sleet changed to snow that clung to the dead grass and swirled around her on the wind, making Hermione grateful for the extra layer the Invisibility Cloak provided. She Apparated to a point within sight of the Diggorys' house, and sighted out the shed, glad to see that the door faced away from the house—at the very least, they wouldn't be able to see her footprints by looking out.

She shifted the weight of Theo's camera, making the strap fit more comfortably on her neck, and dug through the bag, placing the contents she would need immediately in her coat pockets—a set of magically reinforced lock-picks for when _Alohomora_ wouldn't do the trick. Before Apparating the rest of the way, she pulled her mobile from the other pocket and punched in her message with painstaking care: "Behind garden, going closer."

A moment later, she was smiling at his reply: "Idiot."

As she had suspected, the padlock on the door was warded against simple spells; she searched through the ring of picks until she found one that looked approximately the correct size. Recalling the months of lessons Theo had given her in the fine art of breaking and entering, she slid it in and used her wand to turn it with enough force to snap an ordinary scrap of metal.

She swore under her breath when it came out twisted with heat, and, with a quick glance over her shoulder, lowered the hood of the cloak so she could work more freely. After it became clear that the same would happen to any of them, whether or not they fit, she chose one of the key blanks and warmed it until it was malleable, letting it form inside the lock.

This time, it turned effortlessly, complete with a satisfying click; the door creaked as she pulled it open, and was followed by the sound of her gasp.

For a moment—several moments—the only sound she heard was the roaring of her own blood. The crunching of footsteps on snow reached her ears too late for her to raise her wand—she could only pull the hood up and duck, hoping he would miss and buy her enough time to escape.

The jet of red light caught her left side and sent waves of numbness spreading out from where it hit.

—

The tinny ring of her mobile dragged her back into consciousness, and sent her fumbling through her pockets.

"It's done that about five times, now," said a boy's voice in the corner. "I don't suppose that means you'll be able to ring someone up to come rescue us, does it?"

She held up a hand as she clumsily tried to navigate the unfamiliar buttons.

Five rings—she'd promised Snape she would message him every ten minutes… Her brain worked sluggishly as she tried to guess how long it would have taken him to panic, until it occurred to her that she would be able to check the time on her mobile.

Just after half-four told her she'd been in the shed for just over fifteen minutes. She selected the most recent message and sent a reply without reading it: "Dig. definitely did it. Have been captured, am in the shed, send help."

"With any luck, that will have done the trick. I'm Hermione Granger—and you are?"

"Nick Littlecombe—there's a girl here named Lucy, but I think she's asleep right now." The total lack of reaction to her name told her that he was almost certainly Muggle.

Hermione shuffled towards the corner from which his voice was coming, and held open the mobile as a makeshift torch. To her surprise, the boy was almost full grown—at least sixteen, with the beginnings of a heavy build, and sandy hair that hung in unwashed locks: the pitch of his voice was probably more from terror than anything. Shackles glinted on his wrists and ankles, and when she flashed the light in the sleeping girl's direction, she saw the same.

"How long have you been in here, Nick? Do you know?"

He shrugged, casting long shadows in the green light. "My mobile died about a day after being put in here, but judging by the meals, about four days? Lucy has been here about a day longer than me, if that helps?"

She counted back—his reasoning dated Lucy's imprisonment on the twenty-third of December, two days after the Stonehenge killing, and about a day before Snape had turned up at their door.

"You were kidnapped on Christmas Eve, then?"

He nodded.

"Can you tell me what time?"

"Two in the afternoon."

Which explained the Diggorys' terse silence at Christmas dinner—they had already known the resurrection had gone wrong, and already had a backup plan—or two—in place.

The mobile rang again, and she read the message eagerly–"Potter and Weasley not back yet. Going to get police if you're not back soon"—as she forced her mind to race through their escape options. It was beginning to occur to her that she could well be dead before Harry and Ron so much as found out where she had gone, and it was with shaking fingers that she replied, "No, don't want Muggles hurt. Have two children with me in shed." Before she sent it, she added the afterthought of, "If not back soon, use owl in Harry's bedroom to send message."

She forced herself to breathe deeply as the message sent, then snapped the mobile shut, finding the camera strap around her neck.

"Have you got anything we can use as a torch?" she asked. "I have a camera, and I want pictures to prove what I've found, but I'm not sure if I broke it in my fall."

If she had, she was fairly certain Theo would kill her.

"There's a fixture in the ceiling, but the bulb has burnt out."

"All right," she said, thinking. "I have some lock picks that I'm going to use to get these cuffs off, and then you're going to help me find a replacement bulb. Do you know how often Am—the man who's holding you here checks in on you?"

"The first two days, it was noon for lunch, and around half-five or six for dinner."

"Which gives us about an hour—the first sign of movement outside, and I need you to at least pretend to put them back on."

He nodded and she handed over the mobile, and retrieved the picks from her pocket. "Hold the light steady."

He obeyed, and it took barely five minutes of effort to pop them off. She dictated her messages to Snape, and marvelled at the speed at which his fingers found the keys, so that by the time the chains were off of his ankles, she knew that Pansy had stopped at the house to drop off several bags of shopping, and had gone off in search of Ron.

Nick climbed to his feet with an alarming lack of energy for someone as young and fit as he was and rubbed at the chafing on his wrists.

"Wake up the girl," she said. "I'll see what I can find."

She dug through her pockets and back, and then swept the floor in the faint hope that Amos hadn't had the foresight to take her wand, but it wasn't to be found—he had taken it, along with the Invisibility Cloak. Her next step was to root through the boxes sitting on the worktable and in the cupboards, in search of a light bulb, and finding only oil that clung to her hands and made everything she lifted slide through them—the shed had at one point, at least, been used to fix up cars after all.

From the corner where Nick was crouched over Lucy, she heard quiet whimpers of protest, and his voice cracking and trembling as he tried to calm her. In straining her ears to hear their conversation, she tripped over something solid, and dropped the box she was holding; it clattered to the floor with the tinkling of broken shards of glass as they scattered across the floor. She bent down to push aside the offending object, and her hands ran along the outline of a beater bat.

"Right," she said. "Change of plan. Nick, do you know how to play cricket?"

At the very least it would be a fitting revenge.

—

Once she had finished waking up, Lucy proved to be as helpful as Nick. She had the energy he lacked, and was tiny enough that he could lift her up to reach the ceiling, where she could screw in the bulb that Hermione finally found in a long-untouched box hidden in the back of the cupboard.

The light was uneven from the grime that she had smeared across it, but it was bright enough that they had to blink sunspots from their eyes.

Now that Hermione could get a proper look at both of them, she was even more horrified. Nick appeared to be the age she had expected, but Lucy looked much younger—twelve would be a generous guess—and wearing a grubby school uniform that only highlighted her scrawny legs and undeveloped form.

She had her theories as to what use Nick was being put to—his lack of energy suggested that he was the one Cedric was draining, whether or not the undead boy knew it—but couldn't—or didn't want—to imagine what purpose Amos Diggory had for her.

As Lucy hunted through the shed, setting aside anything that could conceivably be used as a weapon, Hermione kept in touch with Snape and snapped photographs of the shed, sending up a silent prayer to any deity that might happen to feel benevolent that nothing would happen to the camera between now and her escape.

"If you've been texting someone, why don't you use your mobile to take pictures and send them?"

Hermione studied the device in her hand with newfound respect. "I can do that?"

The girl looked at her as though she were a complete idiot. "Of course you can."

The second she got out of this shed, Hermione decided, she would use her budget to buy mobiles for the entire department, regardless of the disapproval of her superiors—she paused at the thought, realising that she would have the control of a department once this was over.

But only if she made it out alive.

Realising that trying to explain she lived in a world where people communicated by shouting into their fireplaces and tying letters to owls as though they were carrier pigeons would probably be an exercise in futility, she handed it over, saying, "I don't really understand how it works—do you mind doing it for me?"

The girl's eyes narrowed in concentration as took and sent the pictures, and read aloud Snape's replies—neither Harry nor Theo were anywhere to be found, but Pansy and Ron had returned and were preparing a rescue—that involved a team of Aurors.

Hermione was both impressed and relieved at Lucy's ability to work without asking questions, just chattering about her parents, her friends, anything to keep a desperate silence from descending.

Nick was even quieter than Hermione, working his way slowly but steadily through the boxes, until Hermione stopped him.

"You're exhausted," she said, patting him on the shoulder. "Rest—I'll wake you up before we need your brute strength.

He obeyed, sagging against the wall with a frightening level of fatigue.

"The battery won't last much longer," Lucy said when she had finished sending the last of the pictures.

Mobile phones with enhanced batteries, she thought, typing out a last text message to let Snape and Ron and Pansy know that she wouldn't be in touch any longer. Ones that wouldn't die right when you needed them most.

She turned off the mobile and the lights at the same time, and shook Nick into alertness.

"Time to take positions," she said, taking off her coat and jeans, swapping them for Lucy's skirt; Lucy pulled on the clothing, tucked her head into the hood, and laid on the floor in approximately the same position that Hermione had woken up in—with any luck, Amos wouldn't see past her to realise his two other captives weren't in their places until after they had knocked him over the head a few times.

Nick crouched on one side of the door, hefting the bat in his hands, and Hermione shivered in her too-small skirt, clutching a rubber mallet and rusted penknife. The silence was deafening; she tried to focus on her breathing, a bird chirruping outside—anything—but, when combined with the darkness, it pressed in on her.

Finally, after what seemed like years, she heard footsteps, and the scratch of a key in the lock. The floor shifted slightly under her feet as Nick tensed, and then light had flooded the shed, and he became a blur of motion rather than a shadow.

The blow caught Amos on his back, and sent him stumbling into Hermione, who jabbed the knife into his stomach and tried to drag it down—it snapped off before she could cause any real damage, and he recovered his balance, launching himself at her with a roar and shoving his wand into the base of her throat.

"Nick—Lucy—run!"

Still holding his bat, Nick helped Lucy to his feet, and she saw him gesture her towards the door.

"Drop the hammer," he said, rage contorting his usually calm voice into a deep snarl.

She let it fall to the ground, feeling real terror for the first time—less for herself than for Nick and Lucy, who had no idea what they were up against, and who hadn't moved.

"You, too," Amos said, without looking back. "Put the bat on the floor, or I will kill her. I'll know as soon as you so much as think about swinging it."

"He will," Hermione lied, trying to keep the trembling from her voice. "Just put it down and get out—I promise I'll be all right."

Nick let it slide from his grasp as he took hold of Lucy's hand, but she brushed him off and launched herself at Amos's back, wrapping her arms around his neck and using all of her weight to choke him. She hadn't a hope of succeeding, but it threw him off balance long enough for Hermione to snatch his wand from him and aim it.

The next moment was a flurry of movement as a blur of red streaked in and leapt for his throat, Nick caught hold of Lucy and dragged her outside, and a voice shouted, "Dad, no!"

As Ron kept Amos pinned to the floor, Hermione cast a Body-Bind, then stumbled out into the snow, where someone caught her by the waist and pulled her close, smoothing her back in an attempt to calm her trembling.

"You complete and utter idiot."

Her burst of laughter rapidly descended into a series of hysterical gasps for air.

—

Fighting her instincts, which told her that nobody would be able to arrest the Diggorys, and question Cedric, Nick, and Lucy quite as well as she could, Hermione let Theo take over. He did it with a degree of cool-headedness that she knew she wouldn't be capable of for quite some time, only leaving his directorial position, once, to approach Hermione stiffly, and with narrowed eyes.

"Just so you know," he said, "I'm never speaking to you again. You couldn't have waited another hour?"

"I didn't know where you were and how long you'd be gone—and there were people at risk." Seeing he was unimpressed, she added, "I didn't intend to get caught, did I?"

"Then obviously I have taught you nothing about survival tactics. When there is a shed with potential victims inside of it, you shouldn't be anywhere near it."

Hermione glanced down at Lucy, who was glued to her side, and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "We were doing perfectly fine before you lot decided to show up—which, speaking of, could you have taken any longer?"

"Perfectly fine? Perfectly fine would have been not getting caught! Perfectly fine would have been waiting for someone—no, multiple someones—to play lookout for your exercise in extreme stupidity. I have days where I wonder how you've made it to this age without accidentally killing yourself."

"Don't worry about him," Hermione muttered to Lucy. "He can be a bit of a drama queen."

"I'm always perfectly justified," he snarled. "Especially right now."

"I thought you weren't talking to me."

"I'm not." He curled his lip and stalked away.

Lucy stared after him, wide-eyed, and Hermione, rather than feeling chastised, had to hide a smile behind her hand.

"He's right, you know," Snape said, from somewhere behind her. "He has every reason to be furious with you."

"So do you—I practically blackmailed you into helping me."

She knew she ought to feel guilty, and half-wanted him to lash out at her, make her release the tears that had built up behind her eyes. As though he had read her mind and was determined to be ornery, he merely brushed her spine with the back of his hand.

"But I understand why you did it."

Hermione flushed at the knowing glance Lucy shot them and turned her face to the ground, as Snape pulled his hand back and shoved it into his pocket. Before she could make her apologies and run away to see how Nick was getting on, Pansy reappeared, bearing a pair of trousers.

"Put these on before you die of frostbite."

"Hypothermia," Hermione said. "Frostbite doesn't kill so much as cause pain."

Pansy rolled her eyes. "Whatever—that skirt looks ridiculous, and if a _Daily Prophet_ reporter shows up to take pictures, I want to look like I've spent my evening rescuing someone with some inkling of fashion sense."

Hermione seemed to be picking up the desire to be as ornery as possible from Snape, because rather than giving the earned biting reply, she smiled and thanked her, making Pansy back away slowly.

"What about you, Professor Snape?" Pansy asked. "Can I bring you anything? Take you home, as you're probably terribly bored? Club Granger over the head to make up for being left on your own, totally helpless?"

Hermione pulled the trousers on over her trainers and under the skirt, turning her back on the people clustered in the garden, but otherwise not much caring who was watching her.

"Here," she said, smoothing the pleats and handing the skirt to Lucy. "I'm going to check on Nick."

She left Lucy to Pansy and Snape with a slight stab of guilt—if there were two people a traumatised child ought not be left with, it was them—and hurried over to where the boy was huddled against the side of the house in one of Ron's old jackets.

"This isn't normal," he said, eyeing her warily. "I don't think you're normal either."

"I've made it my life's work to constantly exceed expectations."

His lips didn't so much as twitch.

"I'd tell you more if I could, believe me," she said, "but it's really better for everyone involved if you just know what you've seen. We can selectively wipe your memory in the space of a second if we don't think you can keep your mouth shut—I hate doing it, but I understand why it happens. The best way to keep you from talking is to not give you anything to talk about."

It was obvious from the set of his jaw that he was less than pleased with what she was telling him, that he was trying hard not to show his fear for a world against which he could do nothing to protect himself. The only reason that she didn't toss him some scrap of information that would help him understand was because of the sharp reminder the previous night had provided her—what people were willing to do for power.

Instead she only patted his arm, and said, "Believe me, I know what it's like to see things happen that you don't understand."

And, deciding that she likely wasn't helping, she wandered off in search of something to do.

—

The rest of the evening passed in a flurry of paperwork, filled out on various people's using an old ballpoint pen from Hermione's bag, and questioning. She found the menial tasks that usually frustrated her the easiest; anything that kept her from focussing on Cedric, who hovered at the edge of their investigation, looking lost, and Nick's accusing eyes.

But when it came time to search the house, she knew that it couldn't be avoided any longer. Waving Cedric over, to the front door, she tried to smile, even though she knew he must feel anything less than happy to see her.

"Thank you for you letter," she said. "We might not have found out in time to…"

In time to—what? Save Nick and Lucy? Stop his father from completing the ritual?

Cedric shifted on his feet, pushing his hair from his eyes and settling them on her shoulder. "I've suspected from the beginning," he said, " but I didn't want to accuse them without anything solid—and I didn't want to believe that they were capable of… that."

"Of course you didn't."

Even she hadn't been fully able to believe that quiet, grieving Amos Diggory was capable of murder, not even for the sake of his son.

"What made you suspect it?"

He shrugged. "When I showed up at the door, they didn't seem terribly surprised to see me—but they were horrified to find out that I wasn't fully alive either. And, then, when you came to question them, they lied about when I—when I came home."

She nodded. That much, at least, had been obvious. "But you didn't want to accuse them without some sort of proof?"

"I'd read up on the murder in the paper, so when I went digging through Father's study and found his research… I had just confronted Mum about it when Potter arrived at the door with some pretty incriminating photographs of the inside of his shed."

"Can you show me those papers?"

Nodding, he opened the door and waited until she was inside before following. The blast of warm air was a shock after first the shed and then running round outside trying to form some semblance of order; she curled and flexed her fingers, trying to help the stiffness melt from the joints, and rubbed her legs through the rough fabric of her jeans.

"I'm sorry," he said, leading the way up the stairs. "I ought to have invited you in earlier—I had forgotten…"

"Do you not feel pain, then?"

"Not in the same way that I remember—I know when something has touched me, and I know when something ought to hurt, but it's almost like I've been dosed with Pain Relief Potion, and some dreamless sleep. It's hard to want to live again, when everything that made it worthwhile is gone."

It struck her like a knife between her ribs that this must be how Snape had felt from the very beginning but no one had bothered to ask, part of why Tonks couldn't bear to touch Teddy, why Colin had seemed so distant when she had met with his family. They suddenly seemed less human than they had, more out of reach than she had thought possible—yet, at the same time, real in their tragedy.

"I'm sorry," she said, trying to keep the quaver from her voice. Her fingers traced a stretch of banister, and she let a splinter lodge itself into her skin as a reminder that she was still capable of feeling.

"Why? I haven't felt anything at all for the last decade."

They paused outside a door, and Cedric pulled a hairpin from his pocket, using it to jab the lock open. Hermione hid a grin, remembering how she had done much the same thing only a few hours ago, then felt curiosity return to her, alongside a sense of gravity.

"Doesn't the taste you're getting make you want it back?"

He led the way to the filing cabinet, and pulled open the top drawer, shoulders sagging as soon as he was leaning over it.

"Not particularly—it's so much work, and I'm… Well, more than anything, it's showed me that I'm finished here. Everyone—except my parents—has moved on, or changed, or grown up. There's no point in grasping for something that isn't mine, that I'm not sure I even want." He paused, using both hands to wriggle a folder out of the space it had been squeezed into. "It's hard to fear dying when you're already dead."

Had it not been for the note of finality in his tone, she would have persisted, but instead she only took the folder from his hands and flipped it open to the first page.

"All of the information you need should be in there, but you're free to look around if you like."

"Thank you, I think I will."

—

By the time she arrived home, near midnight, she was bordering on collapse; rather than attempting a sensible remedy like sleep, she brought the stacks of files up to the study with her, retrieved an ancient (and probably stale) packet of crisps from the pantry, and set to work, trying to keep from smudging grease stains across Amos Diggory's papers.

Insane criminal or not, she had to admit that he was brilliant—precise, detailed notes on each side of the parchment combined with meticulous research, almost endeared her to him; his detailed calculations and complete absence of leaps in logic made her wonder if his punishment could involve secretary work for whichever department she ended up in.

She became so engrossed in the work that she didn't notice Harry until he tapped her on the shoulder.

"I have been sent to inform you that Ron isn't speaking to you any more, and that Theo is still not speaking to you."

"Ron?" Surprise sent her eyebrows upwards. "Why?"

"When Ron came home, Snape was in a state, which sent Pansy into a state. I think it's his idea of manly protectiveness."

"Our Ron is a keeper, isn't he?"

Harry grinned. "Now, be nice—he's just looking out for his girl."

"Pansy can take care of anything that faces both of them with a single poisonous glare."

"Anyway, I also came up here to tell you, if you're going to kill yourself with overwork, then you should at least let me cook you one last meal."

"And when you say 'meal', you mean…"

"Full spread. Anything you want—you've had a trying day."

She steepled her fingers and peered over them with a dangerous glint in her eye. "I shall have my ideal menu prepared in ten minutes time—why don't you make a pot of tea and bring it upstairs for me?"

As Harry shook his head and left, she turned her attention from reading to making a list of things she would like to eat—salad with blue cheese, elaborate chicken concoction with a side of pasta—and had just made it to the dessert when Harry returned, bearing a tray with tea, cup, and saucer.

"I'm almost done," she told him, pausing her quill above the parchment. "Just trying to decide between chocolate éclairs and cheesecake."

He snatched the list from her, leaving a trail of ink along it, and read it, shaking his head. "I was hoping you wanted curry, and I could just step out for takeaway."

"You promised."

"Blue cheese? Really?"

"Yes, really," she said, setting down the quill and pouring herself a cup of tea. "Now, go—cook—I need to be productive."

She pulled the files towards her and tried to pick up where she had left off, but found that her concentration had been broken. A quick skim of what she had read up to that point didn't help, nor did casting a silencing spell around the cracks in the door. When she caught herself rereading the same line for the third time without absorbing it, she shoved the papers aside and stared blankly at the wall.

It hadn't even been a week, and she had already grown used to Snape's presence in the room—the way he propped her head up on pillows when she fell asleep, his ability to locate useful scraps of information, even just the fact that someone would respond when she began talking to herself. Irritation welled up inside of her as she realised that his absence was what made her lose focus; without him, she didn't have to prove her work ethic to anyone, didn't have anyone who could follow her threads of thought—didn't have anyone with a sharp enough eye to critique them.

She had been fine, before him—complacent, perhaps, but nothing had struck her that she couldn't work through. She would have to be fine again, once she had found a way to reverse the spell, and he was… gone.

Tears slid around the corners of her eyes and she blinked them away—it struck her that the weight her lungs were struggling against was grief, and that the urge to lie on her back on the floor and ignore it was her response to the inevitable loss of something that she couldn't—didn't want—to name.

He was as good as gone already; he just hadn't left yet.

—

When Harry returned with a tray of food, she was lying on the floor behind her desk, trying to shut her eyes against the swell of emotions. The smell roused her first, making her wonder if she had moped long enough to have died and woken up in a delicious afterlife of food; when she opened her eyes to see Harry had set it down beside her and was using his hands to waft the scent towards her, she moaned.

"Marry me."

Harry laughed. "Give me a few years to settle down—I'm experimenting."

"Theo is a walking experiment—when he's done with you, you'll have experienced all the experimentation you can possibly imagine."

"As long as he doesn't decide to rip my heart out and have his mother feed it back to me, I'm sure I'll survive."

"Then you're in luck—his mother doesn't cook. In fact," she added, picking up her fork and using it to prod the chicken breast before her, "I'm sure you could stun her into loving you by cooking for her. This is beautiful—I think I might cry."

"You already look like you're about to."

"And your cooking is about to make it all better—you even brought up little éclairs."

He pulled the fork from her fingers, and shielded the tray with his torso. "You aren't getting away with it that easily—I will withhold food until you share."

"That's torture, that is."

"It is one of my many Auror-ly skills." He stuck out his tongue. "Besides, you're torturing yourself as it is—how much more can this hurt?"

She scowled, flinging herself at him in a desperate bid to reclaim the cutlery. "Trust me, you don't want to know."

"I think I already do know."

"Somehow, I doubt it, but I'm sure your guesses will amuse me."

"Gosh," he said, rolling his eyes. "So much opportunity for angst in the last couple of days. I'm not sure how I'll choose which bit is eating you up inside—oh, yes, you're feeling guilty because you didn't solve the case quickly enough to save those children from being hurt."

"No."

"The werewolf girl, and how you ought to do more to help the conditions of werewolf life?"

"Not really, no, although give me a few days and I'm sure it will hit me."

"Having to send all our zombie friends back to their proper state?"

"A bit," she said morosely, shooting a glance at Snape's empty chair. "But not quite."

Harry followed her gaze and paused as comprehension dawned; he shook his head, as though trying to dislodge the shock from his features. "I don't know why I'm surprised."

"Because he's dead-ish?"

"You'd fall for the shortest, most shrivelled goblin, if it had brains."

"Short and shrivelled is a mark of beauty in goblin culture."

"Snape makes more sense than a goblin," he said, patting her shoulder.

She rolled her eyes to disguise the fact that tears were beginning to well up. "Thanks—that was incredibly helpful."

"Here," he said, moving the food so that she could access it and wrapping his arm around her shoulder. "I'd tell you that you need sleep, but I know you won't listen, so at least accept my offerings of energy. It scares me when you start to lose your sense of humour."

—

The meal didn't energise her, but it did manage to fill the hollow ache that had developed between her ribcage and abdomen enough that she convinced Harry to leave her propped up at her desk, giving her stack of files another attempt.

In spite of the complexity of the arrangement of Ogham symbols, she was beginning to realise that the ritual was really rather simple—it had more to do with timing and a balancing act than complex incantations. Some careful application of arithmancy to the calculations Diggory had already provided for her, and…

The source of her hesitation chose that moment to push his way into the room, and Hermione felt the hollowness return. It wasn't only that Cedric's words were echoing in her mind—that life was too much work for the dead to want to bother with—but the way that his eyes refused to seek hers out and instead chose to focus on the bookshelf; she couldn't help but feel it was anything short of a deliberate slight.

"Cedric Diggory told me something today," she said, "about how he couldn't quite feel things in the same way—and I was curious…"

"You want to talk about my feelings?"

Coming from his lips, it sounded every bit as ridiculous as she felt asking; she tried to laugh it off, but it sounded high-pitched and uneven, like a fresh coat of paint that failed to hide the cracks and peeling edges.

"Yes," she said, pushing back the chair and approaching him from behind. "I do."

She reached out and traced a finger down his spine, keeping it to barely more than a tickle. His muscles tensed, but otherwise he didn't respond.

"Can you feel this?"

He turned his head just enough that she could see the taut lines of his jaw. "Yes."

Her hands slid up to his shoulder blades, where she applied pressure. "This?"

Another nod, as he shifted his head so that she could no longer read his expression.

Before he could shy away, she grabbed hold of his shoulders and squeezed until her fingers locked. He squirmed, but didn't break away.

"Christ—yes, that hurts," he snapped. "Just not quite as much as it ought to—as I want it to. Does that prove your point?"

"You _want_ it to hurt?"

This time he did step away, as though her words hurt him more than her hands were capable of.

"It would mean that I were alive, wouldn't it?"


	9. Chapter 9: The Cost of Living

Chapter 9

The Cost of Living

Once she had derived the proper equation, the rest was easy; the ritual was about inversions, about releasing energy rather than tying it down, about giving entropy a helpful push as opposed to fighting against it. All she had to do, metaphorically speaking, was cut the synthetic cord between body and soul.

"It doesn't have to be your responsibility, you know," Harry told her over a cutting board of raw tomatoes, when she approached him to ask for a unit of Aurors to act as guards doing the ceremony. "You're allowed to hand off the difficult bits to someone else."

She inhaled deeply, letting the smell of frying garlic mingle with the fresh herbs he had just finished chopping; elaborate breakfasts in bed had always been one of his many ways of persuading Ginny to stay longer than she had planned—Hermione doubted that Theo would need much more convincing.

"Says the man with the hero complex the size of a moderately large European country. When was the last time you let someone else take over for you?"

He paused to wipe his knife clean. "I think I had been knocked unconscious."

"Exactly my point," she said with a glare. "So you understand why I can't hand it off to someone else? And you'll help me?"

"Of course—you need them at dawn?"

She nodded. "Ideally at least two hours before—I've found an equally powerful but less popular site in the Hebrides that we can use. It'll be easier to keep us shielded from Muggles, this way."

"Give me coordinates and I'll make sure it happens."

That was the easy part—the less simple aspect of her plan was to find a way to convince all of the undead and their parents that this was the best course of action—she didn't anticipate much in the way of protest from the zombies, but their grieving families would be a different matter. It would be a matter of convincing them that resurrection proper was out of the question, as was letting them stay on in the same way.

Especially because every calculation she had performed seemed to indicate that either all of them or none of them would have to go.

She climbed the stairs slowly, pausing every so often to glance behind her, as though someone would burst through the door with some vital piece of missing information that would allow her to put everything right, that wouldn't ask her to hold five lives in the palm of her hand and then squash them.

Snape had abandoned his chair for her desk, and was scribbling in the margins of her notes, double-checking for options she had missed or variables she had ignored in her first run of arithmancy. Even though he didn't need rest, he was beginning to develop the slightly crazed stare of the sleep deprived; it was almost like looking in a mirror.

"He said he'd do it," she said, sagging back into his—well, her, really—armchair. "Not that he wouldn't, but I suppose security is one less thing to worry about."

"You have to talk to them, you know," he said. "You're just putting it off by concentrating on inane details."

"I might ask Theo to—"

"Theodore Nott still isn't speaking to you, in case you hadn't noticed."

Which was harsh, but true. For possibly the first time in his life, Theo's need to talk was being overcome by his anger for longer than five minutes at a time.

"I need to make it up to him, anyway," she said. "He's right—I was stupid—"

"And apologising so that you feel less guilty asking him to do your dirty work for you isn't going to repair the relationship."

She sighed and struggled back onto her feet. "In the event that you were wondering, I really hate you right now."

"Hardly a new experience for me."

Rather than stay and let their conversation turn into a blazing row about nothing in particular, she stormed out in search of a shower and tried to drown the memory of his eyes in the water that poured down her face and through her hair. A sob punched her in the stomach, and she couldn't fight it in time to prevent water from streaming down her throat and into her lungs.

She doubled over, coughing and spewing water until she no longer knew whether her face was wet with water or tears, and fumbled for the tap, cranking it until the water scalded her back. When her skin tingled and leapt with heat, and all of the stiffness had evaporated from her joints, she turned the water off and pulled a towel around her shaking shoulders, burying her face in the corners of it and letting herself cry.

—

The visit to the Weasleys came first. Although a part of her had wanted nothing more than to avoid seeing their reaction to having Fred back, she knew that this wasn't a visit she could ask Theo to make for her, whether or not he was speaking to her. Dressed more professionally than she had since the Stonehenge murder, she Apparated to the Burrow and steeled herself against the pain she was about to cause.

The inside felt less like a home than a morgue—no traces of baking drifted on the air, and in spite of the roaring fire the house felt frozen, as though all of the life had been poured into Fred, who couldn't do anything more with it than keep himself in one piece.

She rubbed her hands together to warm them and accepted the seat they offered, trying hard not to notice the ashen tint of their faces and the way that some of the copper seemed to have faded from their hair, leaving it almost brown.

George looked particularly gaunt. He sat close to his twin, but only enough to create an illusion of closeness. When she looked closely, she could see him shift and lean towards Angelina—perhaps as a way of recoiling in horror, but perhaps, more generously, out of a desire for comfort that his undead brother couldn't give.

Her outline of the plan was brief—Portkey to the Callanish Stones, perform ritual, go home—and she focussed on the fact that she needed consent from all undead persons involved. She chose her words, careful to look only at Fred as she spoke, although the pained expressions on Molly and Arthur's faces filtered in through her peripheral and nearly broke her resolve to keep her emotions out of it.

In the end, she knew, it would be better for them to have some outlet for their rage and frustration than giving them reason to pity her.

"I'll do it," Fred said, not looking sideways at either of his parents.

There was no humour in the grim set of his mouth, only a sort of deadness that she didn't want to associate with him; it was the same emptiness she had read in Cedric's eyes before he shut her out, that Tonks had tried to express but fumbled on.

"There are just a few forms I need you to sign—I doubt that you'll be trying to sue us from beyond the grave, but I need to ensure that there is a paper trail…"

Pulling a clipboard and quill from her purse and returning them to their usual size, she handed them over and waited until the scratching of his signature had finished before looking up and away at his family, who had clustered around him.

—

In comparison to the accusing gaze of the Weasleys, the Creeveys all but welcomed her with open arms. Dennis clung to his brother's arm and their father had to wipe away the tears that spilled from his eyes and down his cheeks, but there was a relief there that this painful uncertainty was coming to an end—or maybe that was wishful thinking.

Even Tonks was relatively easy. The extended time with her son had taken its toll—he was old enough to ask uncomfortable questions and understand when he was being brushed aside—and she seemed almost eager to extract herself from the realities of raising him.

It struck Hermione in a way that it hadn't before how young Tonks was—only a handful of years older than Cedric had been when he had died, and thrown into a role for which she hadn't been prepared. If Tonks and Lupin had lived, Teddy might have been a source of bitterness rather than something celebrated—the mistake tying together an otherwise failing marriage.

Nevertheless, Hermione couldn't resist trying to comfort the other woman. "Your mother has done a marvellous job with him."

"Much better than I would have."

The way Tonks's eyes lingered on her son playing on his toy broomstick as she signed off on the waiver told Hermione that some part of Tonks would have liked to try.

—

Hermione arrived home, emotionally drained and on the verge of collapse to find Theo sitting in the foyer, waiting for her with a cup of tea in hand. She raised a hand in greeting and turned her energy to unwrapping her scarf from around her neck.

"Professor Snape told me where you went," he said, holding out the cup and saucer as a peace offering. "I'm really sorry you had to do that alone."

"Not your fault." She hung her coat in the closet and accepted the tea, sitting next to him. "I ought to have apologised before this."

"I ought not expect you to apologise for being you, even if your compulsive need to help people frightens and disturbs me."

Leaning into him, she inhaled the mingled scent of his aftershave and her tea—spice tempered with lemon—and felt her lips relax into an upward curl. "Harry's the same way, you know."

"No," he said, "he's not. He never battles evil without hopping round to all his friends' places and picking them up, but you—you can't resist the urge to dart off to do good whenever the urge strikes you, and you never act like you need anyone. One day you'll be out of your depth and no one will no where to start looking for you."

"Is it all right as long as I promise to leave a note?"

"This isn't funny." His torso convulsed, as though he wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. "You're my friend, and if anything happened to you because I wasn't in the room when you got one of your brilliant ideas to back you up—sometimes I wonder why you have such an overdeveloped brain, because you never seem to use it."

She took a sip of tea to buy enough time to think of a response that wouldn't infuriate him further. "I do need people, Theo—I don't know where I'd be if you and Harry and Ron and Pansy hadn't turned up at the last minute, and I certainly don't want to consider what would have happened if Snape hadn't agreed to help me."

Shaking his head, his mouth twisted somewhere between disgust and amusement, he tucked an arm around her shoulder.

"I did see what you did to those locks—I'm impressed."

"And I'm perfectly aware that I couldn't have done it without you."

He swatted her ear. "Oh, shut up and let me sulk."

With some of the heaviness lifted from her chest, she returned to the study, only to have it return in full force at the sight of Snape scowling down at the same stack of papers.

"You look as though you haven't moved in hours," she said, kneeling down beside him so that she could see what he was staring at.

"I haven't. If it were possible for me to sustain a lasting back injury, it would have happened this morning—there are perks to being mostly dead."

"Are you in need of a little pick-me-up?"

He rolled his eyes and set down the quill. "Anyone would think you enjoy letting me feed off of your life energy."

"It's not so bad if I do it regularly," she said, "and I'm willing to do anything to avoid the smell. It's been nearly eighteen hours—give me your hand."

As the now-familiar dizzy sensation rushed through her head, she kept track of the seconds it took for the tug to fade, but didn't let go when it ended. Instead, she traced the lines on his palm absently as she hunted for the words that would ease her mind.

"If you don't want to, er, die, we can put the ritual off," she said. "Find a way to send back only those who want it."

"You know as well as I that there isn't one—the energy released from the Stonehenge ritual wasn't powerful enough to fully revive one person, so it was spread over five people in the same graveyard who died within a few years of each other. You've seen the calculations, and you know what they mean as well as I do. There isn't any way to break apart the magical bonds without some sort of catastrophic response."

His words jolted something in her mind and nearly sent her sprawling. "If we could harness the energy released when the bonds are broken, we could complete the resurrection ritual—"

"And, at best, destroy only a continent or two? Absolutely not."

Her eyes focussed on the stack of books they had copied from Malfoy Manor. "Or we can try something else—there has to be a way to go about this that will make this work."

"There is, if you're willing to kill for it," he said, "but I don't think you are."

Which had a painful ring of truth to it. She let go of his hands and let hers fall.

—

The rest of the preparation was easy—nothing more involved than sending instructions for Aurors to arrive with Portkeys at the houses where the undead were living, and studying a map of the Callanish stone circle, sketching out a plan for how the ritual would have to be positioned.

Every so often, laughter floated up from the ground floor—a second round of Slytherins had filled the house and were saying their farewells to Snape—making her wish she had gone downstairs when invited. She glanced at the clock, and then out of the window; although the heavy clouds obscured it, she could tell from the patchy light filtering through that the sun had nearly finished setting—there was only tonight.

With a deep breath, she forced herself to set the quill down and leave her notes as they were—it was inevitable that something would refuse to go as planned, leaving her to improvise, but there was no sense in driving herself crazy over it.

She hobbled down the stairs, feeling weak and unsteady, and into the kitchen, where she found two dark-haired women whose names she probably ought to remember consoling one another in the corner. Raising a hand in acknowledgement, she rummaged through the cupboards until she emerged with a box of stale biscuits, put the kettle on, and sat down to wait for it to boil.

It was a sign of how far she had come in the last week that she didn't flinch at the sound of Pansy's voice; it had become almost a welcome sound, especially since it signified the speedy removal of the weeping girls and a return to silence.

Snape staggered in a moment later, apparently in shock. If he had any metabolic process to speak of, she would have offered him a drink.

"There's nothing quite like an impending death to make one feel appreciated," he said, and she could tell that he was trying to keep her from seeing something, even if she didn't know what. "It's fortunate that they don't have to live with me, or quite a few of them would be forced to eat their words."

"Shall we continue on with the trend? Sit down, and give me a few minutes. I'm sure I'll be able to think of something nice to say."

He obeyed, and silence stretched between them—an ambiguous silence that she wasn't sure she should break. Maybe, after that barrage of people, he wanted someone who wouldn't demand his attention.

Then again, maybe he was scared; maybe he needed the moments in between to be filled up and pushed away, leaving him no time to think.

"I do realise that I'm not about to win any beauty competitions, but surely it can't take this long to think of something on which you can compliment me. After all, isn't it what's inside that counts?"

So he wanted to talk, then.

"That might be where I'm running into difficulties."

"You aim to kill my self-esteem and send me to my death? How pleasant."

"Or I could just be running through your many good qualities, overwhelmed as to where I ought to begin."

He flashed a grin. "You are a terrible liar."

If she ignored the slight shaking of his voice, she could almost take their banter at face value—but she couldn't, and because of that she couldn't fully devote her mind to her replies. Every word he spoke had to be taken apart and analysed for hidden meaning, and she began to take the things at which he seemed to be poking fun seriously.

But then again he was here talking to her by choice, so he couldn't be angry with her—could he?

She was saved from having to answer her own questions by the arrival of Harry and Ron, bearing cartons of takeaway. As she pulled cutlery from the drawers, Ginny arrived and Pansy reappeared with Theo in tow.

"You're probably safe to have some," Hermione said to Snape, setting the table with glasses of water and bowls. "Sunrise is around eight tomorrow morning, so I can't see undigested food being a problem between now and then."

He made an effort to disguise his flinch by tucking his hair behind his ear. "I suspect that taste is rather like everything else—not much more than a hint of what it should be."

The scent of curry drifting out of the cartons carried with it the promise of flaming tongues; lifting the lid of one of them and sniffing only confirmed it.

"In this case," she said, "that may prove to be a blessing."

The conversation carried on until nearly midnight without faltering, at which point Pansy began trailing off mid-sentence, and Harry had to gather together his team of Aurors to give them their instructions for the next morning. Theo had his mother to take care of, and Ron and Ginny had left hours before to spend the night with Fred.

Which left Hermione alone with Snape once again. Rather than trying to keep the conversation alive, they fell silent—Hermione to tidy up the kitchen, Snape to push the uneaten pile of cold rice round his plate. It was more comfortable, now, but Hermione couldn't fully repress the feeling that there were things she needed to say: too many things and not enough words to say them.

Without turning away from the sink, she said, "I'm sorry."

At first he didn't say anything, just padded to where she was standing and stood next to her in silence.

"I wish we could have found—"

"There are ways," he said. "You just made the intelligent and well informed decision not to use them."

There was irony in his tone, but she couldn't tell if it was directed at her or the world in general. Rather than searching for a reply that wouldn't betray her uncertainty, she scrubbed at a bowl with soapy water that scalded her hands.

"It gets easier every time, as you lose sight of the consequences—and once the possibility for resurrection becomes available…"

She nodded, although his words didn't release the fist in the pit of her stomach. "There are too many dead people who ought to stay that way. I know that."

Amos Diggory's choice of victims for his second round still had the ability to make her feel ill, in a way that his use of an indistinguishable middle-aged man hadn't. If Nick had been providing Cedric with the energy to keep him from decomposing, then that left Lucy as the next human sacrifice—the one with the least ability to fight back.

"You don't want to—well, die, for lack of a better word, do you?"

She lifted her gaze so that it rested on Snape's profile, which he kept still, eyes trained on the wall. It was the question she had wanted to ask from the beginning: whether or not he wanted a second chance and if he resented her for her decision.

His lack of an answer told her everything she needed to know.

Something brushed her lower back, gentle—even tentative. It took a moment for her to realise it was his hand, and another before she reacted by shifting into him until she could lean her head against his shoulder.

—

Her alarm woke her long before dawn, not muffled by the damp air that lay over the city. She dressed and brushed her teeth in the dark, careful to make as little noise as possible out of habit.

Snape was sitting up in the study, reading by the dim light of her desk lamp; she didn't miss the way that his eyes narrowed when she slipped in.

"I'm going to get something to eat," she whispered, "and then we ought to go."

"I only have a chapter left."

And he wouldn't have a chance to finish it later… She sighed.

"We can leave when you've finished the book."

"Thank you."

Not trusting the grey light slipping through the windows from the street, she clung to the banister and felt her way down the stairs.

The smell of fresh coffee dragged her further into wakefulness and she stumbled into the kitchen to find Theo and Pansy sitting across from one another sipping from twin mugs.

"Don't tell me Harry gave you the key already," Hermione said, fumbling for a mug of her own. "Did I mention that he might move quickly?"

"Did I say that I don't particularly care?"

"I let him in." Pansy's voice was little more than a mumble, muffled by Theo's slurping.

"I take it that you two are coming?"

Theo nodded, and Pansy said, "Do I look like a morning person? What else would possess me to be up at this ungodly hour?"

"The wonderful company?" said Theo.

"Really? Where is it?"

Feeling lighter in spite of herself, Hermione made her way back up the stairs, flicking lights on as she went. Snape shut the book with a snap when she poked her head in.

"Is this my cue?"

She grimaced at the taste of pure, unadulterated coffee. "Looks like there will be a slight delay—Pansy and Theo look like the living dead—" She paused. "Sorry, that was horrible of me. You look like a paragon of health in comparison."

"Thanks." He raised an eyebrow. "How much longer must I sit here in torment?"

"Just until they've imbibed enough caffeine to make them functional human beings."

She claimed his usual armchair and clutched the mug to her chest as though it were her last tie to sanity, staring down into its black depths. There was no milk or sugar in it; that had been a mistake.

Looking at his expression was another: eyes locked on a stack of paper on the desk, hands clutching the armrests, and lines etched into his face more deeply than ever.

"Professor Snape?" she asked, keeping her voice gentle.

His eyes didn't so much as flick upwards, and he gave no other outward sign of having heard her.

"Severus?"

He did look up at that, but his expression was too bleak for her to do anything but set down her mug and move across the room until she was kneeling beside his chair.

"Everything will be all right." She wrapped her hand around his, and it seemed that the coolness of his skin and the absence of a pulse had never been more noticeable. "I promise."

"I'm not afraid," he said, voice hard. "There isn't anything to be afraid of—except nothing."

"Maybe," she said, searching for the words to comfort him. "Maybe—it isn't that there is nothing, but that it's too—too different for you to express."

Ironic, that she was trying to find a way to explain the afterlife to a dead man. The words sounded like what they were—empty comfort.

Their eyes met in a way that told her they had only looked at each other before as they would a mirror—blank and only seeing what was expected. This gaze was searching, probing, as though they were determined to seize this last opportunity to know and understand each other.

For a moment, she couldn't breath as the force of what she saw crashed over her and knocked the air from her lungs; then it occurred to her to wonder what he saw—pain, desperation, terror, even revulsion—and she strained upwards, feeling the scratch of the carpet through the knees of her jeans, to brush her lips against his. Something tugged, but not the usual feeling that accompanied giving him energy—rather, it was somewhere between her diaphragm and her throat, something like nausea.

And then she had collapsed backwards onto her heels, trying not to choke.

—

It was easy to be brisk outside, where the wind ripped through her windbreaker and caught in her hair, whipping it around her face in taut ribbons. She shivered as she directed her group of undead, grateful that Harry had been here hours earlier to set up the anti-Muggle spells and the wards designed to keep the power released by the ritual within the circle of stones. There were still two hours before sunrise, but she wanted to be more than prepared.

She forced herself to look at the group huddled around the sheltered half of the circle; only Cedric didn't have anyone to see him off. The Weasleys clustered around Fred, their various spouses and significant others hanging back to give them space. Draco surprised her, less because he was there than because of the way he took Charlie into a one-armed embrace and led him away, almost tenderly.

Then there was the way that everyone seemed eager to approach Snape, shake his hand, apologise for the way they had treated him—she could tell from the stiffness in his shoulders that he wasn't entirely comfortable with the situation. When Harry left his post to offer his hand and thank him, Snape's posture began to border on hostile; he almost looked relieved when she began herding them together and shooing the bystanders out of the stone circle.

When Pansy gave Snape one last tearful hug, she tried to tell herself that it was the wind that sent a tear streaking down her face.

It was a matter of minutes to arrange them into a pentagon—she had mapped it out ahead of time—and giving each of their hands a squeeze before positioning herself in the centre.

She found it was simpler to evade Snape's gaze and feel the torrent of emotion that came along side it, but part of her didn't want to look away. When his turn came, she positioned him at the point facing where the sun would rise—behind clouds, but that was beside the point—and let her hand linger on his a moment longer than it had on the others.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, then turned away from him and walked to the centre.

It felt as though she stood there for hours, shivering inside her jacket and trying to remember how to breathe before Harry sent up the red sparks to indicate that sunrise had begun. She turned to where Snape was standing and spoke the first word of the ritual, feeling awe fill her as her skin began to tingle with the reverberations of raw power.

The second word only amplified it, and the ritual tore the third word from her mouth before she could consciously recall the pronunciation. It was as though she had been filled with an electrical current that fizzed and sparkled just inside her skin; it had probably frizzed her hair out into a ball, her eyes were rolling back in her head, the magic escaping to the surface of her skin left scorch marks, but she couldn't bring herself to care. Every cell in her body screamed with life, at a pitch that she couldn't bear to hear yet couldn't seem to tear her thoughts away from.

As the fourth word of the ritual rose to her lips—the one intended to channel the power into the circle of stones—she realised her mistake. The magic was pulled from her and began to leap from stone to stone, amplifying rather than absorbing.

The magic leapt around with increasing speed, creating a whirlpool of magic that swirled around her, twisting her thoughts around and over each other until she could no longer separate herself from the current. There was a shooting pain through her head that pulled her back—she tried to suck in a breath of air—her knees gave out beneath her weight—and everything went black.

—

She opened her eyes to the feeling that she was seeing everything through green-tinted, over-prescribed lenses that created a twisty sensation in the pit of her stomach. Her hands tightened around the chains they had caught hold of, and she pitched forward.

It was only when the metallic scent of blood mingled with wet sand in her nose that she realised she was in a playground, twisting a swing round and round until there wasn't enough chain left untwisted for her to hold on any longer.

Beside her, a tiny dark-haired boy with skinned knees pumped his legs and swung higher—he could only be Snape.

"Are we dead?"

Her voice was louder than it ought to be, echoing against the slide and stirring the still air into movement.

"No," he said. "This is The Place In-Between. We only die when we leave—and we have to leave sooner or later."

Something tried to push itself to the surface of her thoughts—something someone had told her about the platform at a train station…

She lifted her feet off of the ground and tilted her head back as the swing untangled itself, feeling the faint tickling of air on her skin; as it slowed to change direction, the thought came to her that she was somehow inside of Snape's version of what Harry had experienced as Platform Nine and Three-Quarters.

"How do we leave?"

He kicked his feet against the ground until he swayed to a stop next to her, and she realised that despite his childlike form, those weren't the eyes of a child. They were too dark, too hollowed out; they also convinced her that this was, indeed, Snape.

"Last time, Lily came for me and we jumped off of the swings—but I think she may have been here before I arrived. Like you were."

Her first reaction was to think that this had to be real—that there was no way she could have known that his childhood playground would be his place of transition between life and death. Of course, she had no way of knowing this was anything other than a connection made by some spark of electricity inside her dying mind.

As if reading her thoughts, he said, "Just because this is inside one of our minds doesn't mean it isn't real."

She straightened with a nod, brushing her hair out of her face; to her faint surprise, it was cropped in the short bowl cut of her childhood, which had been her mother's flash of brilliance when it became too much to comb through the tangles.

"Shall we?" she asked, straightening and beginning to pump her legs in sharp bursts of energy.

Snape followed her example and caught up to her in height without any apparent effort. When their swings matched, he reached sideways and tugged her hand.

"Jump when I tell you to."

She twined her fingers into his, strengthening her grip as they lurched forward again. He shouted a word that she couldn't quite hear, and then they were in the air, tumbling through it without hitting the ground.

Her entire body seemed to stretch as the playground faded and the slide was replaced with a towering stone that jutted up into the air. Others joined it, apparently moving towards them through the swirling fog; Hermione tightened her grasp on Snape's hand, only to find empty air.

With a painful thud that reminded her what it meant to be alive, she landed on her knees before the tallest of the stones.

To her horror, they began to move, unfurling before her eyes into towering figures large enough to crush her without a second of thought. Something about the roar of crumbling rock told her that these were ancient beings—old beyond her comprehension—less than pleased about the nature of their awakening.

_Are you the one who has been disturbing our siblings?_

The combined voice of the stone-creatures was like the grating of granite on granite, the shifting of sandstone after hundreds of thousands of years. It took an effort of will not to cover her ears—it wouldn't make a difference, anyway, not when the voice was inside her head.

"Siblings?" She gulped air, trying to buy time to organise the thoughts racing through her head. "The man who did that is done—we've stopped him."

Whether they meant Stonehenge or all the other smaller, less common stone circles across Britain was trivial; if she had anything to say about it, no one would be using ancient sites for rituals of any kind for a long time.

Except that she was dead now, wasn't she?

Grief hit her, then, if it were possible to grieve for oneself, and, as the roar of a landslide quieted to the trickle of slate sliding down the side of a mountain, she couldn't bring herself to focus on anything but the pang in her chest at the thought of Harry and Ron—and Theo, her parents, the department she would never have the chance to run…

_Why did you wake us, then?_

"I-I didn't realise what I did would—that is, I didn't realise…" She trailed off, and cleared her throat. "What are you?"

_We are the giants of the island. The shining ones. The inhabitants tell stories about us, mostly false now—we are always aware of what is said of us, even when we sleep as long as we have done._

Some of the weight had left the voice, and it seemed to glitter instead of scrape as hollowed out bits of rock focussed on her like eyes. It was almost gentle, little more than a tickle.

They must have felt the question rise inside of her, as before she could ask they gave her the answer.

_We have slept here for nearly four thousand of your years. The humans will tell you that we were vanquished, but it was a choice freely made. Giants are slow to change, and we chose to keep our knowledge rather than descend into the mindless violence that our kind has adopted as their way of life._

"Oh," she said. "I'm sorry to hear that."

_No one has dared to wake us until now, out of fear that we would unleash our wrath against humanity in revenge._

"You don't want to, though—do you? If we didn't do anything to you…"

More scraping and cracking filled the air, and her first instinct was to curl into herself and pray that they forgot about her in their apocalyptic dreams, but when she saw the trembling of what might pass as shoulders, it occurred to her that they were laughing.

_We have no desire to play a part in the affairs of humans, and we sense that you do no wish to continue with ours._

"With all respect, no—not particularly."

_Then we shall give you a parting gift. Your visit will fill our dreams and entertain us for another four thousand years and we wish to thank you. We do not like being indebted to your kind_.

Before she could open her mouth to say that whatever gift they could offer her would likely be unwelcome, the stones began to dissolve into blackness and all she knew was the pain that shot through every cell in her body, exploding on the insides of her eyelids in patches of blinding white light.

Some of it drained from her—enough that she could lift her head and find that she was back inside the stone circle, flat on her back in the same place she had performed the ritual. There was no trace of any of the others—only brown grass flattened against the earth by the force of the wind.

Distant shouts were masked by gasps for breath—at first she thought they were hers, but her chest wasn't heaving and the way the wind tugged at the sound, making it fade in and out told her that it was coming from a few feet behind her head. She twisted her torso and nearly died for the second time that morning—the sight that met her eyes nearly stopped her heart.

Huddled on the ground, naked and trembling, his skin white and free of scar tissue, was Severus Snape.

The shouts grew nearer, and she dragged herself onto her hands and knees, pulling off her windbreaker as she crawled towards him and draping it over his shoulders before anyone else could reach him.


	10. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

_And we return to her with thirsty eyes,_

_With history burning between our thighs,_

_With naked longing trembling behind our smiles…_

—"There's Not A Step We Can Take That Does Not Bring Us Closer," Jason Webley

For the first week after the ritual, Snape barely looked at her—avoided her study, refused to eat dinner with her, would even stand to leave when she entered a room. She began to believe that everything she had supposed, everything she had hoped but not dared to think had been a figment of her imagination, and that there was nothing to do but stand back and let him live his life as he would.

The position of Department Head in Mysteries was made vacant in the space of a day—rumours wound their way through the cracks of the Ministry's walls that Kingsley Shacklebolt had struck a deal with Henry Popplington to take an early retirement for various ridiculous sums of Galleons—and Hermione accepted her promotion after several tearful protests from Theo without feeling much of anything at all.

Some of the ache eased from her chest during the second week, and by the third week she could talk to Snape civilly and not fling herself onto her bed with dramatic sobs immediately afterwards. Nevertheless, she was relieved to find that work mostly remained firmly in the category of inevitable paperwork that had to be completed by the newly promoted head of the department.

"You'd hate it," she shouted to Theo over the sound of open mic night at their usual pub. "Lots of reading, and the occasional signature."

"You ought to get one of those stamps with your signature on it," he replied. "I hear the Muggle Prime Minister has one—and you're practically as important as him now."

"Please never equate me with Tony Blair again. I like to think I'm better than that."

When they found themselves in the exact same place the next night, he leaned over and said, "So I suppose the fact that you've been drinking every night means that you and Snape still aren't shagging."

"If Harry told you, I'll kill him."

"He didn't—but Pansy started a betting pool, and he owes me ten sickles. I knew the two of you would spend at least three weeks circling round each other pointlessly without so much as talking."

"What did Harry think?" she asked, stealing a chip off of his plate.

"A week and a half. Pansy said about five minutes—because that's what she would do—and I think Ron said two weeks. So that leaves me."

"And if we don't sleep together?"

He shoved his hair out of his eyes to give her the full force of his narrowed eyes. "You will—I'm always right about these things."

"I wish I were that confident."

—

She arrived home that night to find Snape sitting in her study, book in hand, almost as though nothing had changed. But she could see the rise and fall of his shoulders, hear the sharp pattern of breath from where she stood, and something in her chest tightened; for a moment, her heart fluttered dangerously, and she had to brace herself on the solid wood of the door frame to keep herself grounded.

"This is silly," she said. "We're both being ridiculous."

"About what?"

She gestured back and forth between them with hands that she seemed to have lost control of. "You know. This. Us."

Silence stretched between them, and, rather than watch his expression harden over as he searched for the words to turn her down, she turned and fled, thinking no further ahead than to hide in her bedroom with a book.

She would finish the necessary paperwork to return control of his estate to him, and let him walk away. It really was that simple—and probably less painful, in the end, than trying repeatedly to break through his barriers and continuing to fail.

Once she had heard his footsteps retreat, she slunk from her room and down the stairs—tea and more reading would solve her problems—to find that he hadn't retreated to his temporary room on the third floor after all.

"I knew you'd be down here eventually."

"Yes," she said icily. "I have been known to eat on occasion. The kitchen seems the ideal place for that to occur."

"And I have every reason to enjoy excessive use of my recently reacquired digestive faculties."

"I didn't say otherwise."

She flung the refrigerator door open with more force than was strictly necessary, and snatched out the first thing that she saw.

"You're planning to eat a brick of blue cheese by itself?"

The door slammed shut as she opened a cupboard and hunted for a clean plate. "I like cheese."

"It's probably started to mould—how long has it been sitting there? A month?"

"It's blue cheese—mould is one of the key ingredients."

Even though she knew better, she turned her head to look at him—that was her first mistake. Her second was to let her eyes linger, taking in the lines between his eyebrows, the fold of his arms across his chest. Rather than imposing, he looked small and desperate; she rotated the rest of her body until it was squared with his and drew her chin up.

"I don't want to make you feel indebted to me," she said. "I didn't really do anything—I don't want you to make any decisions on the basis of that assumption." She didn't want to be his reason for being.

For a moment, silence hovered over them, and she felt as she had in the study: like a presumptuous fool.

"How like you, to assume everything is your fault."

He tried to sneer but it faded when she took a single cautious step towards him, as though she were balancing on a thread that held them together and if she looked away, she would crash back into reality.

"Isn't it, though?"

The second step was his. "Did you ever consider that I needed time to think? I didn't expect to live, and it's so much easier to spend on a budget."

"I'm so glad I was your impulse purchase."

He sighed, and she had to stop herself from feeling giddy at the fact that he was breathing. "You're being difficult."

"Difficult is your job," she said. "I'm just here to point out the flaws in your metaphors."

"I don't know what I want. I've never had the opportunity to find out, and I can't promise—"

She silenced him with a finger on his lips. "I didn't ask for a promise—I'd rather you didn't make any at all. I am asking for a chance."

That small brush of contact woke something in her that had lain dormant far too long. Heat flooded her and made her skin tingle as she pulled him in towards her, grateful for his warmth, for the scent of cologne mingled with wool scratching the back of her throat, for the fact that she was finally allowed to touch his face, his hands, his throat without having to plan it and brace herself for the loss of energy.

He lifted her, letting her rest on the table where her eyes were level with his, and touched his lips against hers, uncertainly at first, and then with more pressure until she thought they both might be bruised in the morning. Her hands found the hem of his sweater and slid under it and up his ribcage until he had to let go of her to pull it over his head.

She giggled into his mouth, and traced the outline of his shoulder blades with the tips of her fingers.

"Upstairs? Reluctant as I am to move, I love the boys too much to force them to eat off this table after we've had sex on it."

Pushing strands of hair from her eyes, he murmured, "Must we? It would be a lovely bit of revenge…"

"For friendship?"

"Surely you must have some source of irritation, something that makes you want to make them suffer…"

"I like my retribution to be swift and painful—it rather takes the fun out of it when they do something to remind me why I'm so fond of them in between."

Wrapping her arms around his neck, legs around his thighs, she let his hands slip around her lower back and pull her close; she inhaled in time to his ragged breathing, their bodies pressing into each other, each filling the valleys of the other until she wasn't certain where she ended and he began.

"You could carry me up the stairs," she said between gasps. "Fulfil the female fantasy of the physically overpowering male…"

"Complete with the occasional punishing kiss? You're too heavy, and I can't seem to breathe. I could probably make it as far as the wall—"

"That could be fun."

"—at which point we would be faced with the unfortunate reality that both of us are still wearing too many articles of clothing for this to go quite far enough to satisfy me."

"And me."

"Besides, I thought that you wanted to force me to your bedchamber and have your wicked way with me—rather, I was counting on it."

"We have plenty of time for both."

He loosened his grip on her enough that she slid until her feet were touching the floor, and bent down to retrieve his sweater. Catching him by the arm, she tugged him towards the staircase, not wanting to break the contact; it was the key to the dizziness that was giving her the courage to continue on, to let his hands wander, teasing her skin through the cotton of her t-shirt, and to shove him against the banister, mouth on his. As soon as she was allowed to crawl back inside her skin, she knew that fear would push her back again, away from this soaring, tumbling sensation; just then, she couldn't bear the thought of behaving sensibly.

Then it was her turn to be pushed against the railing, and straddle him as he collapsed onto one of the stairs, teasing his lips with hers—she only noticed that she had lost her shirt when he had unhooked her bra and hitched her up, using teeth and tongue to tug her forward and bring her hips into him.

"Christ."

"I'm not sure I like you calling another man's name right now."

"If you're still trying for witty banter, I'm obviously doing something wrong."

Somehow, through bursts of movement punctuated by frantic moments in which they clutched and tore at each other, they made it up the first flight of stairs.

"Your place or mine?" Hermione asked, trying to sound collected, in control; she only managed breathless.

"Yours is closer."

They stumbled down the corridor and into the bedroom, sensations battling with the presence of mind she had managed to cling to: the flitting of his fingers along the inside of her wrist, the chuckle that echoed through the cavity of her chest when she pressed herself again, the burning sensation that spread from her stomach into her thighs, that made her collapse into him before they reached the bed.

Except for the trembling that ran through him, just under his skin, he had grown still. Buried within the intensity of his gaze, she saw something akin to terror; it brought her back into herself, reminded her that she wasn't the only one spinning out of control.

It took a conscious effort to remain playful—pushing him onto the bed, tugging off his trousers and then hers, climbing on top of him and pinning his hands to the bed—but some of the shaking ceased as she took control.

A gasp—a series of gasps—sent her control spiralling into nothing; her hand slid off his and he used it to grip her back until she felt the bite of nails.

He shifted his hips, driving up into her, filling her until there was barely room for shallow breaths, leaving her empty and slipping down, hunting for more. When she couldn't hold herself up any longer she collapsed forward, letting her forehead rest along the curve of his throat.

The haze shrouding her thoughts parted long enough to let one slide through, and some of the panic subsided—they didn't have forever, but they had the rest of their lives to sort this out, to make it work, if they wanted it; it was longer than they might have had.

She rolled closer, resting her head on his chest so that she could hear the thudding of his heart, slightly faster and not quite in tandem with hers. For a moment, a force seemed to be squeezing the air from her lungs—she wouldn't cry, that would be pathetic—but she realised that it was just his arm wrapping around her back and pulling her in close. He pressed his nose into her hair, and she felt the rise and fall of his chest that told her he was inhaling her scent.

His breath on her scalp tickled; she squealed and wriggled away from him, but he pinned her beneath him. The laughter faded from her breath as he lowered his lips down to hers, and for the moment she let herself sink into it, relinquishing control as he had done for her.

"What now?" she asked when he pulled away, breathing ragged.

A slow smile spread across his lips. "We could begin a second round—there is an awful lot of lost time to make up for."

"Quick recovery?"

He laughed softly. "Not quite, but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy yourself."


End file.
